


Minesweeper

by yellow_caballero



Series: MLM/WLW Hostility [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Big Time Homosexual Moments, Bullying, F/F, Gaslighting, Gen, Jon and Gerry commit praxis by mooching off Georgie's generational wealth, M/M, MLM/WLW Hostility, Martin's knitting needles might just be knives actually?, Role Swap AU, Season 3 AU, Shunning, This Little Workplace Comedy You Call An Archive, Tim ranks in League but Daisy can beat him in Splatoon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:15:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27081052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellow_caballero/pseuds/yellow_caballero
Summary: “I don’t care what Elias says,” Melanie said, watching Basira uncap her dry erase marker with a vengeance, “we aren’t letting that pig Stoker into the polycule.”In which Tim and Sasha attempt unsuccessfully to integrate into the Archives, Jon joins the Ferret Protection Program, Georgie falls in love, and Melanie learns the value of 'good enough'.
Relationships: Background Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Georgie Barker/Melanie King
Series: MLM/WLW Hostility [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1976449
Comments: 22
Kudos: 144





	Minesweeper

**Author's Note:**

> This is a continuation of my previous fic in the series 'Space Cadet'. It is recommended to read that one before this. But, like, I'm not your Mom. Most of what you need to know is that this is a Role Swap AU and everybody in it is incredibly petty. 
> 
> If Season 4 exists and doesn't ALSO turn out to be an absolute monster then I will post it as the second chapter of this one. This is basically the first time I've updated a story as I write it, so excuse the messiness. This is all very much something written for fun, as a goof, that ended up being so fun to write I accidentally just kept writing it. However, please keep an eye out for some actually pretty intense bullying in this one. 
> 
> Thanks to LazuliQuetzal for supplying the jokes, Nymm_at_Night for supplying the cheerleading, and magikko for getting so angry about the Nikola thing that I had to add it in. Enjoy.

**Monday**

“I don’t care what Elias says,” Melanie said, watching Basira uncap her dry erase marker with a vengeance, “we aren’t letting that pig Stoker into the polycule.”

“Isn’t it kind of fucked up that our boss can decide our polycule for us?” Martin asked, whittling a wood cat out a small branch with a wickedly sharp Hello Kitty knife.

“We aren’t in a fucking polycule,” Daisy said. 

Basira wrote in large, bold letters at the top of the whiteboard ‘HOW TO STOP THAT PIG STOKER FROM INTEGRATING INTO THE POLYCULE’. 

Unfortunately, Martin was right. Due to the laws of capitalism, commerce, supernatural forces, and blackmailing, Elias could let whoever he wanted into the polycule - uh, the Archives. Honestly, bad enough that they already had Martin. Dude had been working with them for two months and Melanie had yet to see him frown _once_. She had thought the consistently mildly pleasant thing was an online persona, but apparently he was just like that. Daisy kept on insisting that the polite thing was a full-time persona and that he was probably a serial killer, but that was rich coming from the serial killer. 

Not that Daisy and Basira and Jon weren’t also freaks, but - well, they were her freaks. She had a limited tolerance for freaks. They couldn’t be her entire social circle, is what Melanie was saying. 

And she was _not_ widening her social circle. 

It was only two hours after what everyone had silently begun calling the ‘Staff Meeting from Hell’, where Elias had made Daisy win the office betting pool by finally admitting that he was a mind-reader who had murdered Gertrude Robinson and forcing Sasha to sign an employment contract - and, by extension, leashing That Pig Stoker. Elias had claimed that the blackmailing was because he was sick of having to thwart all of Stoker’s assasination attempts on Jon, which Melanie appreciated, but she suspected it was just free labor. As usual with Elias, there was probably more than one reason. It wasn’t as if Melanie hadn’t helped with the blackmail. When it came to the important things (blackmail, not knowing the definition of the word privacy, stopping Jon from doing stupid things, comic books) she and Elias tended to agree. Learning the whole ‘our boss is a murderer’ thing was also slightly upsetting, but seeing as they had all been cohabitating with Daisy for years they all agreed that it wouldn’t do to have double standards.

Therefore, they only had two hours to plan their avenue of attack. The whiteboard was pulled out, a team meeting was called, and Jon had claimed that it would be unethical as their boss to participate in their organized plans for psychological warfare. He settled for staying in his office and pretending that they weren’t doing it, which was for the best - Jon _sucked_ at psychological warfare. 

Technically, they had never involved Martin in any attempts at psychological warfare either, but they all felt as if he would be a natural. 

“Just out of curiosity,” Martin asked, raising his hand. They were all sitting in a semicircle in front of the whiteboard, not even pretending to work. “Do you guys do this often?”

“No,” Melanie said. 

“Yes,” Basira said. 

“Why do you ask? Do you know a lot about psychological warfare? Do you use it on your victims before you _kill them_?”

“Cool down, Daisy. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize, here. We only have two hours before James and Stoker are required to show up.” Basira put their time limit in the upper left hand corner of the white board, adding an exclamation point. “Throw out ideas for how we can bully them, everyone. We’re making a mind map.”

“Gaslighting!” Melanie called out immediately.

“We’re always gaslighting people,” Daisy said, bored. “Let’s just assault them.”

Martin nodded. “Kill Bill.”

“We have to maintain plausible deniability,” Basira said regretfully. “Let’s keep actual assasination attempts, physical violence, etc, off the table. You’ll have to restrain your homicidal impulses, Daisy.”

“Did you _not hear Blackwood_ -”

“You know,” Martin said thoughtfully, pausing where he was whittling a very adorable kitty cat, “some cults exert complete control over their members by relying on social pressures. They start off by ‘love bombing’ their recruits, offering unsolicited and unconditional acceptance so they stick around.”

“But we’ve already forced Stoker and James to stick around,” Basira pointed out, looking intrigued by the idea.

Martin nodded. “Exactly. We don’t have to keep them involved. But cults tend to cut off the outside social support of the members. Through adding on obligation after obligation, discouraging outside friendships, and asking you to cut off family members who are not within the cult, they make it so that you have literally nobody but cult.” He held up a hand, then clenched it. “So when they punish you, they ask the other members to ‘shun’ you. Everybody ignores you. Nobody talks to you. You are rejected, unilaterally, by everybody in your life. It doesn’t sound like such a big deal, but the isolation and rejection is so complete that it’s actually a very effective control trick. Since Stoker and James are already forced to be around us eight hours a day, and we _know_ they don’t have any other friends, maybe we can try that?”

Everybody stared at him. 

Basira broke the silence by giving him the Official Hussain Thumbs-up of Approval: the golden fleece that Melanie had spent her entire life striving for. “Glad to see we have another tactician on board. Martin, you’re almost as smart as I am.”

“Aw, shucks.”

Daisy screamed into her hands. 

“Subtle, unprovable, yet devastating.” Basira wrote in lage words ‘SHUNNING’ on the whiteboard, following it with a numbered list. She wrote down her next points as she said them. “We ignore them. We don’t even _talk_ to them. They do not eat lunch with us, they do not participate in our daily after-work hangouts. It’s like they don’t even exist.”

“Small issue,” Melanie pointed out. “They probably don’t want to hang out with us.”

“Stoker has a chronic need to be the center of attention and James needs constant validation about her intelligence,” Daisy panned. “If Jon heaps on the criticism about her work, he can make her cry.”

“But we don’t _do_ any work.”

“That’s step two,” Basira said grimly. She whistled sharply, and Jon quickly stepped out of his office and poked his head into the cow pen. “Jon. We need you to give Stoker and James a relentless amount of busywork.”

It was a good idea. Jon probably couldn’t totally ignore them, as their nominal manager. However, there were a _lot_ of ways to be a terrible manager. Jon usually didn’t even have to try to be a terrible manager, but with a small amount of effort he could really raise the bar. 

“But you keep on saying to stop assigning you work,” Jon said, confused. 

Daisy took pity on him. “We’re shunning Stoker and James. We need you to single them out for criticism, give them an unfair workload in comparison to the rest of us, and act as if they can’t do anything right. Go full 2015.”

Everybody shuddered. _Never_ go full Jonathan Sims, 2015. 

But Jon just saluted grimly, ready to shoulder the burden of his personality when he was overstressed, underqualified, and terrified of his coworkers. “It shall be done.”

“Everybody focus,” Basira called out. “We only have two more hours to create the most toxic work environment physically possible. We need all hands on deck for this one.”

“Wow,” Martin said in admiration, “I didn’t know you guys were capable of working hard on anything.”

Basira threw a pencil at him. He sliced clean through it with his whittling knife in midair. Everybody clapped but Daisy, whose eye twitched. 

It took two hard hours of brainstorming (well, thirty minutes before they got distracted), but by the time they all heard the rattle of heels in the hallway outside the Archives, everybody was back at their desks and innocently wasting time. Ever since Daisy had installed the lock in the door into the Archives and Elias had obliquely given them all permission to stop caring too much about the statements, they had really given up all pretense of genuinely participating in capitalism. Sometimes they did things if they got bored. Usually not. It was like those workplace sitcoms where nobody conveniently did any work. You know what they say: Boss makes a dollar, they make a dime, that’s why they gaslight on company time. 

The door rattled open and James poked her head into the Archives, somewhat nervously. She was dressed differently than they had seen before - they were used to her cop uniform, and later to her unemployment chic t-shirt and sweatpants, but now she was wearing a nice little pantsuit with heels. Her voluminous curly brown hair was neatly styled, and she had foregone her contacts for small glasses. She looked as if she was about to give a presentation on marketing. She was holding a cardboard box with a few possessions in it - Melanie saw two laptops, some plants, a planner, and a desktop organizer. 

James...was not as bad as Stoker. Then again, it was an extremely low bar to say that someone wasn’t as bad as the guy who tried to murder Jon _twice_ in the last four months. He had downright been chasing him around. It was both disturbing, weird, and a little clingy. 

James had quit the force. Melanie could respect that - the only good cop was a cop who had quit the force and done some serious self-reflection on their choices. Granted, she had mostly quit the force because she was tired of dealing with supernatural shit and the constant gristly murders were bumming her out, but it was close enough. The entire polycule had decided that she was a bad person who deserved what they were doing to her, but she could probably have a redemption arc if she worked hard enough. After two weeks of hazing, they’d reconvene and make another decision. 

That being said, going full ‘hear and see no evil’ was also evil, and they were going to haze the shit out of her. 

She stood in the entrance for a few seconds, staring at them with wide eyes, clearly wondering how her life had gotten to this point. Nobody looked up - Martin was typing away on his computer, Melanie was editing her vlogs, Basira was reading, and Daisy was beating Angry Birds. She loved Angry Birds. Melanie had gotten her a little Angry Birds plush for Christmas and it was the only decoration on her desk. 

“Uh,” James said eloquently, “I’m supposed to start today, right?”

She continued being ignored. 

“Right,” James said slowly. “Uh...where can I put my stuff?”

James was ignored as thoroughly as she used to ignore due process. 

“Okay…”

“Ah, Ms. James.” Jon had finally - or, depending on if you were in the know, right on cue - stuck his head out into the cow pen, looking as perfectly professional as ever. “You’re late on your first day already?”

That panicked her - James’ eyes widened, and she shifted the box in her arms to look down at her watch. “Elias said we had two hours, I thought -”

“Wow,” Martin whispered. Everyone else giggled. James’ face flushed. 

“Just try not to do it again,” Jon said disapprovingly. He stood back and waved her in. “Come into my office, we’ll talk about your duties.”

Twenty minutes later, as the Assistants did their favorite slightly physical activity and tossed a ball between them for fun, Stoker burst through the door. Melanie had already begun to realize that he was physically incapable of walking into a room without some way of making sure that everybody was looking at him as he did it. Nobody did, of course, but Melanie could see as she dived for the ball that Stoker was dressed down - just flannel and jeans, with a bomber jacket too thick and heavy for the weather overlaid on top. He wasn’t carrying anything for his desk, or even a laptop.

“Alright,” Stoker announced, clapping his hands, “since I _fucking_ work here now, where do I sit?”

Melanie tossed the ball to Basira. “So where _would_ Bigfoot live, then?”

“I’m saying Finland,” Basira said stubbornly, easily catching the ball. She had divulged to the rest of them that she used to play softball as a kid, which was apparently her greatest shame. “There’s nobody more depressing than the Finnish.”

“Americans.”

“True.”

“Uh, hello?” Stoker said loudly. “Anybody home?”

That was when Jon and James stepped out from his office and the hallway. James looked slightly shellshocked. Great, he had given her the full Sims Special. Nobody could survive that. 

“Mr. Stoker. Thank you for finally arriving.” Jon carefully looked Stoker up and down, making him glare back. “An hour and a half late _and_ out of dress code violation. Since it’s your first day, I’ll give you a pass, but I must ask that you attend in work appropriate attire next time.”

Wow. His Elias impression was on-fucking- _point_. Stoker just sneered, crossing his arms. “Or what? You’ll write me up? Like I care.”

Jon purposefully let his eyes drift to James, who still looked somewhat shell shocked by the cold welcome. “I’m certain Elias would be interested.”

Stoker clenched his jaw so hard that a muscle jumped. “Fine. Whatever.” He grabbed one of the spare chairs and roughly dragged it over to the desk with the box of James’ things in it, throwing himself down onto the seat petulantly. “Let me know what I gotta do, _boss_.”

“Well, you can hardly do anything without a desk.” Jon scratched his chin as Martin caught the ball from Basira. “I’d go requisition one. In the meantime, you ought to do your work in the library.”

Separating him from James. Stoker blinked at Jon. “How do I requisition one?”

Melanie snickered, repeating what he said mockingly in a high pitched voice. “ ‘How do I requisition one’?”

Everybody snickered. Stoker flushed. 

Even Jon smiled. “You’re a smart man, Mr. Stoker. I’m sure you can figure it out. Come into my office, I’ll let you know what I need you to do.” He glanced at Daisy, who casually stood up and followed Jon into his office. Stoker, practically growling, stood up from his chair and stalked into the office. 

Well, Melanie thought optimistically, at least Daisy would stop Stoker from killing Jon until they made it clear that if Stoker so much as put a _finger_ on him again Elias would dump James and his ass faster than you could say ‘hostage’. She would have felt bad for him if it wasn’t for...well…

“Well,” James said, with faux cheer as she sat down in her own seat. She clapped her hands together, smiling a fake and brittle smile. “I’m excited to be working with you all.”

Everybody rolled their eyes, and went back to tossing the ball between them as they argued about if Bigfoot was real. 

  
  
  


Melanie had to hand it to her friends: they were _experts_ in psychological warfare. 

She had been a little worried about Martin, since he was so sweet and gentle, but if anything he was the hidden genius among them. He had a very special talent of complete mastery over his facial expressions. He never broke composure or character. And whenever Stoker or James asked a question, he had this expression that just _screamed_ ‘You’re an idiot for asking that question and I’ve never been more embarrassed on someone else’s behalf before’. 

When lunchtime rolled around, everybody easily grabbed their lunches and went to go eat outside on one of the picnic benches. They all had a very nice time high fiving each other and validating each other on their successful bitchiness. 

“Wow!” Jon said, excited for once as he ate the sandwich Martin packed for him. “I’ve never been on the other end of bullying before! This is fun!”

“You’re, like, _really_ good at humiliating people,” Martin said, twirling a strand of hair around his finger. “So, like, have you ever thought about making any ASMR videos, haha?”

“What’s -”

“Right in front of my salad?” Daisy asked. 

When they got back to the office, everybody was laughing and Daisy had Jon’s head tucked under her arm, giving him a righteous noogie as he yelled at her. James and Stoker had been sitting next to each other at one of the desks, eating their own lunches, hands drifting perilously close to touching, never quite bridging that gap. 

“So who’s down for drinks tonight?” Melanie yelled loudly, as Stoker and James jumped and immediately shifted a meter apart. Save room for Jesus, guys. “My treat!”

“Actually,” Jon said, successfully wrangling his head from Daisy’s aggressively friendly clutches, “I was thinking that we could go back to my place for drinks tonight. Definitely a cause to celebrate, right?”

Everybody gasped but Daisy. They had _never_ been invited to Jon’s apartment. Actually, the only person whose apartment they had all been in was Melanie’s, which was their usual hang-out spot when they weren’t feeling the pub that night. Basira and Daisy refused to admit that they lived anywhere - or maybe they refused to admit that they lived _together_ \- and Martin had demured each time, which made Daisy shout something about his murder shack. 

“The only reason he never invites everyone over is because he’s scared his flatmates would intimidate people,” Daisy said serenely. “It’s not that impressive. His mattress is lumpy.”

“You steal the blankets,” Jon pointed out. Stoker and James exchanged identical ‘ _holy shit the beast and the serial killer are sleeping together’_ looks, which would almost make more sense than their actual relationship. “Anyway, they’ve both been bothering me to invite you two over. They keep saying it’s no fair that they haven’t met my closest friends yet.”

“Yay!” Melanie punched the air. “Finally we meet the elusive flatmates!”

“I’ll bring board games,” Basira said, almost halfway kind of sounding excited about something. “I haven’t played Cluedo in ages.”

Martin looked slightly as if his Christmas Fireman Pin-up Calendar had come early. He also seemed to be producing a noise only audible to dogs. Melanie nudged him with her elbow, so he didn’t embarrass them all by insinuating that anybody found Jon attractive. 

Sure, he was hot, just like everybody in the Archives but Melanie and, if she were to be rude, Martin. But Jon was the kind of person who was hot only until he opened his mouth. Melanie was forced to admit that Stoker and James would have also been extremely, unrealistically hot - like, TV star hot, James could _get it_ \- if it wasn’t for the fact that they were terrible people and thereby also unfuckable. At least Jon was unappealing on every level in a little brother way.

“I just hope everybody has a good time. My roommates don’t bite - er, not unless you want them to.” Martin’s eyes magnified like a bug’s as Jon glanced at James and Stoker, who were staring at all of them. “Ms. James, Mr. Stoker, I believe lunch finished ten minutes ago. You both have work to do.”

“Everyone else took ten minutes extra too!” Stoker said angrily, gesturing at the three box high stack of old papers Jon dug up from someone in the library. “I have _three boxes_ of files to photocopy and put in your stupid spreadsheet, but _nobody else_ has _anything to do_!” He pointed at James, who looked embarrassed. “You’re having her staple together an entire self of fifty year old documents!”

“It is causing me physical pain,” James groaned. 

“If you whined this much at your old job, no wonder you were fired,” Jon said frostily, and both Stoker and James winced. Martin muttered ‘oooh’ under his breath. “Honestly, you two, do try to be professional.”

Stoker bared his teeth, an animalistic challenge, but James caught the back of his jacket and reeled him in. She flashed a fake, plastic, and perfect smile at Jon. “Understood, boss. We’ll get right on it.”

“Looks like someone finally leashed the pig,” Basira muttered to Daisy, loudly enough that everyone could hear it. Stoker flushed red in rage, but James redoubled her grip on his jacket. She whispered something in his ear that made him lean back, clenching his fists tightly, and Melanie giggled obnoxiously. 

After that, Stoker kept on trying to get their attention. They could all see it - how much it was killing him not to be the axis that the room revolved around. He needled Daisy, effortlessly picking out the weak point of their most impulsive member, and mocked Melanie, but whenever he got too annoying about it Daisy tapped her phone and Jon came out into the bullpen to scold Stoker for slacking off. By the end of the day, he looked infuriated enough to rip a phonebook in half. 

They all packed up in unison, pulling their jumpers back on and chatting as their computers closed down and Melanie closed her video editing program (“ARCHIVES PSYCHOLOGICALLY TORMENTS CRINGE POLICE OFFICERS” - it was Patreon only). Melanie asked them all to hold on a minute so she could use the bathroom, so Basira and Daisy shrugged and chatted as Martin finished up his daily routine of sharpening his knives. 

It was only when she exited the bathroom, pulling her curly red hair into its elastic, that she saw James leaning against the wall. Uh oh. The old isolate and interrogate strategy. Cops loved that shit. Melanie pretended she didn’t see her, but James pushed off from the wall and stood right in front of her, arms crossed. James, unfortunately, was one hundred eighty cm to Melanie’s respectable one hundred sixty, and Melanie found herself forced to lean back to lock eyes with James. It wasn’t James’ style to physically intimidate someone - she seemed to prefer ripping someone apart verbally, as Stoker physically intimidated them. In that respect, they were a good team. 

If Melanie yelled, then Daisy wouldn’t waste a moment. No more ‘assault on an officer’ charges. Nothing would protect her. But James knew that just as well as Melanie did. 

“I get that you’re mad,” James started.

It was such a ridiculous and stupid way to begin the confrontation Melanie couldn’t help but bark a laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

“I get that it wasn’t fair of us to do that stuff to you,” James said quickly, crossing her arms in a way that somehow felt more defensive than steadfast. “I get it, okay? We were just doing what we thought was right. Come on, your boss has crazy psychic powers. Can you blame us for thinking he was, I don’t know, _dangerous_?”

“What crazy psychic powers?” Melanie asked blankly. It has been the company line ever since he had pulled off the only cool thing he had ever done and brainwashed Stoker into revealing cringe secrets. No matter how hard Stoker tried to stab him over it, they all denied that it had happened. “You mean Elias and his creepy mind reading powers? Nothing’s dangerous about that guy besides his tax evasion.”

“That’s not - I mean, how can you say Bouchard’s not - he _killed_ \- that’s not what I meant!” James growled in frustration, flexing her hands as if she wanted to wrap them around Melanie’s neck. “I don’t want to be here any more than you do. I’m scared, okay? Tim’s scared too. We should be working together, as a team, not - like, divided against each other. You know?”

Melanie looked at her blankly. 

James tried another tactic. “You heard him say that none of you can quit either, right? Doesn’t that make you mad?”

Melanie shrugged, somewhat awkwardly. “I mean, I was pretty relieved to hear that? We’ve kind of been spending the last year or so worried that we might be fired for not doing anything. It’s good to hear that we can’t actually get in trouble for anything that he’s not going to kill us for.” The only person who was at risk was James, and they all knew it. “Plus, you know, the job market’s shit and this job pays weirdly well. I can afford a decent London apartment, which isn’t easy! Good working environment, I like my coworkers...so, like, I don’t care.”

“Do you all just not give a shit about anything?” James asked blankly.

“We’re millennials, so no.” Melanie paused in thought. “Well, Daisy’s kind of a Gen Xer, but we forgive her for it.”

“The Director of this institute is a _literal_ supernatural monster.”

“Aren’t all white men?” At James’ incredulous look, Melanie leaned in. Maybe there was something in her eyes, something that had encroached into Melanie so slowly she hadn’t even noticed, and for the first time James looked at her as if she existed. “Look, James. I get it. You aren’t a bad person. You care about people, and you just want to put away the bad guy and help the good guy win. I get you. Really, I do. But you really aren’t as interesting or as complicated as you think you are. I clocked you from the beginning. You’re still just another two-bit bully.”

“You don’t know what you’re - 

But Melanie leaned in, and James leaned back. “We do not have the same definition of good guy and bad guy. Your good guy tried to _kill_ my friend, who did nothing wrong other than trying to protect me from getting hurt by a meathead on a power trip. My team isn’t going to forget that. And until you get that through your thick pig skull we will _never_ be on the same team.”

This time, when she stepped to the side James didn’t stop her, by the time she ducked her head into the Archives to tell her friends that she was ready, she was no longer thinking of James at all.

  
  
  
  


The fact of the matter was this: Melanie didn’t really want to be stuck in this dead-end job the rest of her life. 

Like, who would? She had only imagined herself working at the Archives for a few years until she found a better position, one that would use her talents and competencies to propel her to a life of indie directorship and documentary filmmaking. Nobody ever wanted to be doing what they started doing in their late twenties for their entire lives. There wasn’t even a possibility of promotion. 

It was just, well...nobody ever got what they wanted. Not really. Maybe they could annoy Elias into firing them...no, that was probably how he killed Gertrude Robinson…

Melanie wondered if she was supposed to be upset about the Gertrude Robinson thing. Honestly, she was just kind of at the ‘adult life is so goddamn weird’ stage. He had reassured them that Jon was too much work to kill, and after Helen’s two hour rants on what a terrible person Gertrude Robinson was everyone had just silently accepted that she had probably deserved it in some way. 

Elias had made it clear that if they killed him, they’d all die too. Because he was the ‘beating heart of the institute’. Guy had a way with overly colorful metaphors. The whole thing was totally weird, but Melanie figured that maybe it was a bonus to the mind-reading thing. He hadn’t explained why he could read minds - he had described it as a “spoil of war”, whatever _that_ meant - but Melanie was forced to accept that it was something that just happened to people sometimes. Like being able to make them tell their stupid life stories, or acne. 

Jon lived in a surprisingly nice flat in Greenwich. Much nicer than he should technically be able to afford, in a neighborhood none of them could ever dream of living in. They all knew Jon was paid better than they were, which was why they made him pay for drinks so frequently, but not _that_ much. As they all poured out of the train station and saw the area for themselves, they all glared first at Daisy for keeping the rich person thing secret - a waste of time, considering Daisy did not feel shame - and then at Jon, for pretending he wasn’t posh. Which was also a waste of time, because Jon felt shame nonstop every second of the day and there was nothing they could make him feel in that department that he didn’t already. 

“I’m living there for free, actually,” Jon said defensively, which helped _nothing_. Even Martin looked as if he was going to use one of his knives on him. “I’m serious! My flatmate is loaded. She covers the rent so long as I do the dishes for everyone.”

“I’ve never hated you more,” Basira said, as they stopped in front of what looked like a humble yet tasteful condo and Jon fished a set of keys out from his pocket. 

“I didn’t know that was possible.” Jon unlocked the door, pushing it open and stepping inside. He pitched his voice into a yell, dumping his briefcase on a small table against the wall. “I’m home! I brought friends!”

“Wow, your friends, who definitely exist?” A light female voice called back, with an unmistakably posh accent. The rich flatmate, then. “Did you pick them up from Canada?”

“Ha ha, Georgie, very funny!” Jon scowled as he toed off his shoes, and everybody hastily piled in after him. Daisy comfortably threw her own backpack down on the bookshelf, as Melanie craned her head to look around the entryway. They had a little _entryway_ . In _London_. Jon muttered to himself as he slipped off his other shoe. “I knew they would try to embarass me.”

“Don’t worry, darling,” Daisy said, thumping him so hard on the back he almost overbalanced, “you embarrass yourself. I’m raiding your fridge.”

They all spilled somewhat awkwardly into the living room, where they all found a lanky and lean white guy with stringy and greasy hair asleep on the couch. He looked a little like a homeless person, if homeless people tattooed ankhs on their clavicles. Melanie personally found that a little appropriative, honestly, but Basira would make fun of her if she brought it up. He also definitely, one hundred percent, thoroughly did not look like the kind of person who Jon would spend time with. Then again, neither did Daisy. 

Daisy ignored him as she speeded to the kitchen, curving around the attached dining area and greeting the woman in the kitchen. Jon, for his part, walked towards the couch with the sleeping homeless man and, with absolutely no warning, kicked him in the stomach. 

It was gentle, somewhat, but the man wheezed awake. He blearily glared up at Jon, who looked extremely unimpressed. “I work all day. I provide for this family. And you won’t even let me sleep? You’re an arse, Sims.”

“We have guests, Gerry,” Jon said primly, “and you’re unemployed, so stuff it.”

“I’m a _rogue demon hunter_ , that’s a job.”

“What’s a rogue demon?”

“It’s not a job if it doesn’t pay!” The woman walked out from the kitchen into the living room, smiling brightly and wiping her hands on a kitchen towel. “Wow, we do have guests. I think this is the first time this house has ever had guests who weren’t Daisy. Hullo, all, name’s Georgie Barker.”

Unfortunately, if Georgie said anything else Melanie missed it, because Melanie could focus on nothing else but the most gorgeous woman she had ever seen. 

Melanie had always thought that love at first sight didn’t exist. Martin had very strong opinions on its existence and the magical nature of knowing that you and the other conveniently attractive person were soulmates, but Melanie was pretty sure he just said that because if he didn’t believe that true love existed he would lose whatever weak thread to sanity he had left. Martin wasn’t exactly unique in this.

But Melanie was a rationalist. A skeptic. She used to go on r/Atheism before she grew uncomfortable with the Islamophobia. She believed in the gradual growth of friendship between two people, where friendship slowly transitioned into romantic feelings, and they built a relationship built on mutual trust and affection. Melanie was a lesbian who yearned, not one who thirsted. She didn’t need a girlfriend to feel complete. 

Before she saw Georgie Barker, she had no idea that there was something missing. 

Georgie was short, a little shorter than Melanie, curvy and soft in all of Melanie’s favorite places. She was Black, with skin darker than Jon’s and a big, broad smile that lit up her face. Her hair was styled up in a gentle cloud framing her face, with a bright red headband matching her adorable red sundress and bright red leather boots. Most notably, she was wearing small circular bright red glasses, reflecting opaquely. Something about her was gentle, kind, and intelligent. Her voice was lilting and sweet, and it kickstarted the beating of Melanie’s heart into overdrive. 

Distantly, Melanie was aware that her jaw had dropped and that she was staring, and it was only when Basira nudged her in the side she snapped back to awareness. Georgie was still talking, apparently not noticing Melanie’s complete attack of homosexuality. 

“ - from that dumb job I’m always telling him to quit. Honestly, sweetie, it’s stifling you.”

“Good news on that front,” Jon said, faux-cheerfully. “It is now literally impossible for me to quit!”

Georgie stared at him. “In a psychological way?”

“No, in one of your…” Jon fluttered his hand dismissively. “Supernatural ways or whatever. Honestly, I don’t keep track.”

“You work at a _supernatural Institute_ that catalogues the supernatural with a flatmate that _collects_ the supernatural and a flatmate who _hunts_ the supernatural and both you and your boss have _supernatural powers_!” Gerry called from the living room, now sounding much more awake. 

But Jon just scowled. “There’s nothing wrong with the supernatural,” he complained. “I have nothing against it. I just don’t want it all up in my face, you know?”

“A literal djinn and her intern shows up at our workplace once a week,” Basira said flatly. 

“And that’s her lifestyle choice. It doesn’t affect _me_.” Jon huffed, blatantly changing the subject by gesturing to his small posse that were filling up the kitchen. “My very real and unimaginary friends. This is Basira Hussain, she’s the mean one I told you about. You know Daisy, unfortunately. That’s Martin Blackwood, the new hire -”

“You’ve _definitely_ told me about him,” Georgie said, with a shit eating grin. 

Martin straightened. “Has he? That’s nice! Ha ha, very sweet. Could you, possibly, maybe, tell me _exactly_ what he said -”

“And this is Melanie King,” Jon said, pointing at a suddenly extremely embarrassed Melanie. “You two should get along. You’re both...uh, what’s the word...willow..weeloo…”

“Women who love women.” Georgie put a hand up and wiggled her fingers at Melanie, smiling crookedly at her. “It’s _very_ nice to meet you, Melanie.”

“Ditto,” Melanie said, mouth dry. Her chest felt like it was imploding and exploding simultaneously. Trumpets were blaring in her mind. There was a piano. 

Her reverie was broken again when Daisy clapped her hands impatiently. She tried to ignore the way Basira was pinching the bridge of her nose. “Beer and Cluedo right now or I walk out.”

“I’ll force Gerry to make snacks,” Georgie said, clapping her own hands excitedly. “Are any of you sommeliers? I have this excellent French vintage -”

That was how, in a bizarre and unknown series of events, Melanie found herself and all of her friends sitting around Jon’s oak dining room table, yelling over dramatic moments of Cluedo and sloshing beer everywhere. 

She gradually discovered that Jon was very close friends with both Gerry and Georgie, and seemed to settle calmly around them as he did with nobody else save Daisy. Gerry had a sharp but dry sense of humor, making him a fast hit with Basira, and eventually they started ignoring the game to exchange book recommendations and treatises on the supernatural. Martin and Jon, as usual, quickly grew wrapped in their own little world, talking in low voices about the staff meeting that morning and what it meant, interrupted periodically by Daisy’s heckling. 

And Melanie found herself sitting on the sofa right next to Georgie Barker, feeling every nerve electrified. 

“So Jon and Gerry tell me you run a YouTube channel?” Georgie asked after a while, half-smiling at Melanie. “Small world, me too.”

“Oh! Really!” Melanie took a bolstering sip of her beer. “It’s just some vlogs, no big deal.”

“Gerry made me watch some of it so we could see Jon at work. The production quality is really good, you have an eye for framing. Did you go to film school or something?”

“Y - yeah, actually, NFTS. Got a scholarship.”

“NFTS? That’s incredible!” Georgie laughed, a little self-consciously. “I’m just a booktuber. I don’t even do YA.”

“That’s cool too!” Melanie said, surprisingly heatedly. “All of booktube is YA, we need more content creators talking about other genres too. Especially women of color, the review industry is so white dominated -” Melanie shut her mouth, indescribably embarrassed. Wow, way to bring up politics and social justice talk the _first second_ , Melanie, way to go, racism is bad, what a hot take -

“Yes! You’re so right!” Georgie brightened, and Melanie melted. “Come on, if we’re going to talk about this I need to get you something better than that nasty IPA. You have a wine preference?”

Stupidly, idiotically, incredibly, Melanie could only say, “Surprise me.”

And then Georgie winked at her, and Melanie exploded. “I’d be happy to.”

They talked like that, for the rest of the night. Melanie did her best to drink slowly, knowing her propensity to over-drink, and she kept herself to two glasses that night. Georgie, who kicked back five, seemed immune to alcohol. Eventually the others drifted back to gaming, with Basira, Gerry, and Martin getting surprisingly intense over a weirdly high-stakes game of poker as Jon and Daisy watched Pokemon on her phone, but Melanie couldn’t tear herself away from Georgie. 

They had so much in common. They ranted to each other about how much Youtube as a platform sucked for only thirty minutes, before getting into the inequities in the publishing industry and then delving into YA drama. Georgie was so quick witted, so eloquent and funny. She agreed with everything Melanie said, she _listened_ to her, and she always had something thoughtful and insightful to add. 

She didn’t even stop Melanie when she found herself ranting about her own past, and her own history. And Melanie _never_ talked about her childhood, not with anyone. “It just always felt so unfair, you know? I never felt like I belonged at film school. Everyone always looked at me as if I was about to wash out any second, even when I deserved to be there more than any of them. I was always too emotional, too hot headed, too much. I’ve always been too much for everyone, I guess.”

“That’s awful. I’ve always had the opposite problem.” Georgie traced a finger around her wine glass. She had taken off her glasses a while ago, and now Melanie was looking right into her big brown eyes. They were curled up close together on the couch, and if Melanie reached out just a little she could touch her. “People have always called me unemotional, or a robot. I always thought it was just because I grew up super rich and repressed, but I never really fit in with the other posh kids either. Maybe it was just me, you know?”

“Screw those people,” Melanie said, surprisingly heatedly. “If somebody doesn’t like you for you, fuck ‘em. We don’t exist for public consumption. If you aren’t hurting anybody, or hurting yourself, then don’t be afraid to _be_ yourself. The people important to you know you’re a good person. That’s what matters, right?” 

It was only then that Melanie realized that Georgie was staring at her with wide eyes, mouth slightly open, as if what Melanie said was the first time she had ever heard it, as if she had always needed to hear it and nobody had ever said it. Melanie abruptly flushed, feeling self-conscious, and Georgie’s cheeks darkened too as they both awkwardly looked away from each other. 

“So how’d you get into booktubing?” Melanie asked, desperately and awkwardly. 

Georgie brightened, maybe just as glad to get away from how awkward Melanie made it as she was. “I’d actually call it more rare book hunting. Most of my channel is about the process of hunting down the book and capturing it. Gerry helps a lot with that, he’s actually psychologically incapable of feeling fear so he’s excellent cannon fodder -”

“Define capturing -”

“But I’d say I first grew interested when I was eight,” Georgie said thoughtfully, and Melanie decided not to worry about it. “Jon and I were reading in his room, when we found this book his Gran bought him from the charity shop. Freaked him the hell out - he hates spiders to this day, I’m sure you’ve noticed - but I loved it. Nothing dangerous had ever happened to me before. Too rich, you know. He gave it to me, I scribbled my name in it, and that was the first book in the library of Georgie Barker!” Georgie grinned proudly. “My library’s about three hundred strong, now. I actually have an agreement with Elias that lets me store my books in the Institute, it’s how Jon found out about the place. Is that cool or what?”

Okay. That was. A lot. But what caught Melanie’s attention was - “You and Jon knew each other when you were eight?”

“Childhood friends!” Georgie glanced back at Jon, who was cooing over how cute Pikachu was with Daisy. “You were an insufferable child, weren’t you, darling?”

“I was the worst,” Jon said affably, not looking up from his screen. “However, there is something psychologically wrong with someone who knew me when I ate glue and then decided to date me in uni and you know it.” 

Oh, god. _This_ was the ex-girlfriend. Melanie wanted to die. Completely uncaring about her pain, Gerry looked up from his poker game. “I met them in uni!” He volunteered. 

“You didn’t go to uni,” Jon said, still not looking up from his phone. 

“Yeah, I met them when I was dragged along to exorcise a ghost from Oxford.” Gerry grinned toothily. “Minute I escaped from my shite Da they let me crash on their dorm room floor and the rest was history.”

“Georgie bankrolls us and we give her an alibi,” Jon said, nodding. 

“The power of Gerry’s daddy issues could make a steam train run,” Georgie added. 

“For the last time, maybe we shouldn’t make fun of the _victims_ of shite men, maybe we should scrutinize why it’s so socially prevalent that we make _jokes about it_ -”

Maybe it was the alcohol overheating her, or the situation bearing down upon Melanie’s head, but she abruptly stumbled to her feet. “I’m going to the loo,” she announced to everyone, before snapping her fingers at Jon. “Show me where the loo is.”

“I - of course?” 

Like a gentleman, Jon escorted her up the stairs to the bathroom, making sure she didn’t trip. Once they were safely out of sight, Melanie threw her hand out and stopped Jon from walking any further. 

“I have a serious question.”

“Martin and I are just friends and I only feel friendly feelings about him,” Jon blurted. When Melanie rolled her eyes, he faltered. “Is that not what you were about to ask?”

Melanie took a deep breath, forcing her head to clear. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Do I have your permission to ask out your ex-girlfriend, and also do you think she’s too good for me?”

Hilariously, Jon looked a little scandalized. “Honestly, Melanie, she’s a grown woman. I don’t own her. Just because we’re in this weird polycule thing -”

“What?” Melanie screeched. “Jon, you’re in _two_ polycules?”

Jon shrugged helplessly. “It’s platonic?” At Melanie’s apoleptic expression, he quickly waved his hands around in a way that he probably meant to be reassuring. “Look, Melanie, I really only think I dated her because she was nonthreatening. I will be completely and totally unoffended if you date her. In fact you - you have my blessing. It would be fun to have you as my sister in law!”

“I just asked because of bro code,” Melanie muttered, trying not to sulk. “Do you really think she’d go for me? She’s all…” She waved her hands, just as helpless as Jon. “Cool and hot and rich and smart and interesting. And I’m just me.”

“You’re all of those things too,” Jon said, sounding almost confused. As if he couldn’t even imagine a world where Melanie wasn’t as good as Georgie Barker. “Granted, you aren’t rich, and I personally don’t find you attractive, and I’m not sure if you could be construed as cool, and I can only assume you’re vaguely intelligent, but she’s not shallow. You have a lot to bring to the table too, Melanie. Don’t doubt yourself.”

Terribly,criminally, and improbablyMelanie found herself growing emotional. That was the nicest thing Jon had ever said to her. In an unprecedented act of affection she hugged Jon tightly around the waist. He stiffened, awkward and confused by the affection, but he slowly raised his hands to pat her on the back. 

“You’re a good friend,” Melanie muttered into his shirt. “Also please admit that you’re bisexual.”

“Thank you,” Jon said, carefully patting her on the back, “and for the _last time_ -”

When they climbed down the steps back into the living room, Georgie looked up at them, and smiled. It was brilliant, and it made Melanie feel so special. 

Jon bent down, whispering in her ear. “I’ve known her for twenty three years. For what that’s worth: she digs you.”

Melanie grinned, feeling the weirdest and strange and most inscrutable emotion of all: the belief that the future would hold happiness, and joy, and love. 

  
  
  
  


**Tuesday**

  
  


“So I have some bad news,” Michael said delicately. 

“Oh my god, who did you eat.”

“Nobody!” Michael said quickly, which was suspicious. Melanie tried stepping around them to enter the Archives, but they did something suspicious with reality and prevented her from moving forward. Melanie, extremely hungover and very tired from staying up until three am texting Georgie, glared at them. “Okay, nobody that you care about. And I really do try not to eat people! America has this lovely thing called corn mazes, and I realized that if I hung out in one for long enough I could passively feed off _everyone_ , and -”

“Please tell me the bad news before I am forced to assume that you accidentally swallowed Jon again.”

“I said I was sorry about that!” Michael protested, before wilting a little at Melanie’s unimpressed look. As usual, they were in a new outfit today. They were very 90s, looking just like a Burger King mascot with a baseball cap turned backwards and a colorful zig-zag print that hurt Melanie’s eyes. “Okay, so I was hanging out with the other Av - I mean, fear demons the other day - “

“There are more of you?”

“They’re all weird and boring. Helen keeps on dragging me to her book clubs and telling me to play with Callum Brodie, but he’s, like, an infant. _And_ he’s mean to me.” Michael scowled, an oddly sharp motion. “But that’s not the point! Point is, Ms. Perry was going on one of her weird libertarian rants again, and I was like, oh, Ms. Daisy is a libertarian -”

“What’s a libertarian -”

“You should become more travelled, Melanie,” Michael said disapprovingly. “It will broaden your mind. The best mind is so broadened it’s painful. It stretched. It hurts, just so much. It is sharp at the corners, like cut glass, and -”

“Michael.”

“Right! Anyway, then your show came up, and everyone got _so_ jealous that we were tight, and Ms. Perry said she was a really big fan, and I _really_ wanted her to stop talking about libertarianism, and maybe I wanted to impress her a little bit, so I offered to introduce you? Honestly, I think she just wants to be on the show? But she keeps on threatening me with the boiling point of black matter and I’m actually kind of scared of her -”

Melanie gently grabbed their shoulders, ignoring how they sent electric shocks down her arms, moved them aside, and entered the Archives. 

Michael had been right to frame it as bad news: there was, indeed, a statement giver in the Archives.

At least it looked like a statement giver. She was sitting in one of their spare chairs, practically posing, as everybody else clustered uncertainly around her. A short, muscular, very butch East Asian woman, she was speaking authoritatively to a very intimidated looking Jon. Melanie’s protective instincts sharpened, recognizing that Jon’s one weakness had stepped into the Archives: a lesbian. Judging from the alert and tense postures of Daisy and Basira, who were subtly trying to push themselves in front of Jon, she wasn’t the only one to recognize this. Martin was sitting casually in a chair near the woman who had to be Ms. Perry, sharpening one of his largest knives with long, slow, and deliberate strokes. Strangely, or not, Helen was also perched on one of their tables, sipping a margarita through a mobius strip crazy straw.

As usual, James and Stoker were uselessly hovering in a corner, whispering to each other and scowling in everyone else’s general direction. James, in particular, wouldn’t stop staring at Helen, who just winked mischievously at her every so often. 

Everybody startled when Melanie walked in, Jon throwing her a patently relieved expression as Basira made their prearranged hand signal for ‘capitalist homosexual threatening Jon’ - which was normally just their sign for Elias, but Melanie got the gist. Michael slunk in after her, obviously a bit embarrassed this was happening at all, and quickly fled to Helen’s side. She gave them a sip of her margarita, which was just bad parenting. 

“What is going on here?” Melanie asked plainly, propping her hands on her hips. Exactly on cue, everybody tried to tell her exactly what was going on simultaneously. She gave everybody a withering look until they all shut up. She pointed at Ms. Perry, who seemed to be the largest unknown quantity. “Who are you?”

Ms. Perry grinned widely at her, in a way that was probably supposed to be charming but instead just came off as extremely threatening. She stood up, reaching out a hand to Melanie, but at Michael’s frantically shaking head Melanie just settled for nodding instead. “Jude Perry. Good to meetcha. _Biggest_ fan of your show. Thought that Personification of Deceit kid was lyin’, but what do ya fucking know -”

“We’re going for a ‘one of us tells only truth, the other one tells only lies’ thing,” Helen added unhelpfully. 

“ - they really did have an in! I’m here to, like, give a statement or whatever.” She propped her hands on her hips, looking smug. “Make sure you get my good side. I’m going to make that bitch Annabelle _so_ jealous I got on.”

In the corner, a spider looked mutinous. Jon squeaked until Martin quickly tossed one of his throwing knives and speared it. 

“Okay,” Melanie said slowly, attempting to process all of this, “when you say you’re a fan of my show, you mean…”

“Your vlogs, obviously.” Jude Perry waved a hand impatiently. “ _Everybody_ who’s anybody watched them. They’re, like, a how-to guide on how to terrorize people. Nolan’s using them as training videos on how to control his cults. That Brodie brat’s watching ‘em like Saturday morning cartoons. You know kids, always watching those, uh -”

“Unboxing videos?” Michael volunteered. 

Jude snapped her fingers, which seemed to sizzle a little. “Right! Like unboxing a human skull video. Anyway, they’ll cream their pants if they found out I was on, so hit me. Take my, like, statement or whatever.”

Everybody stared at her. Sasha was furiously scribbling something down in a notebook. Stoker looked vaguely as if he wished he was dead. 

It was Martin who broke the silence, which was out of character enough. “Sorry,” he said pleasantly, brandishing the knife as long as his forearm as he sharpened it. Guy knew his weapon care. “We don’t really take statements here. They’re bad for Jon’s tummy.”

Jude narrowed her eyes at Martin. Martin smiled even more pleasantly. Jude’s eyes flickered to his knife. Martin angled his knife until the fluorescent lights glinted off it, doing something very strange to his expression. Daisy carefully moved her hand to push her flannel back, showcasing the slight bulge where she concealed carried. Jude paled a little. Jon looked both offended at the implication that he was delicate, a little resigned to it, and slightly touched by the heartwarming display of homicidal affection.

“Okay, sure, whatever,” Jude said finally, as if she and Martin had been having a very furious discussion. “I won’t do anything to him or whatever, I just want to brag.”

“That’s lovely!” Martin beamed. “Jon, haven’t you been saying that you’ve wanted to work on your investigative reporter skills?”

“What? I mean - oh!” Jon brightened. “Yes, I have! We’ve all agreed it would be a good, ah, redirection of my energy. I was thinking Melanie might be able to teach me…?”

“That’s a great idea,” Melanie said quickly. “Come on, Jon, first practical lesson in investigative reporting now. Helen, can you do Jude’s make-up?”

“Ew,” Jude said. 

“Absolutely! This is just like being on a movie set, so much fun!” Helen nudged Michael, somewhat painfully. “Darling, help us with the lighting, will you?”

“I hear theater techs are unionized,” Michael said spitefully. 

Helen smiled at him. 

“Melanie, where do you keep the flashlights?” Michael asked, jumping off the table. 

In short order they had set up a miniature recording studio in the recording room, which had previously only been used as their designated nap room. They had to kick an inflatable mattress out of the shot, and then very quickly stop Helen from lying on it and ruining it. As Basira helped Melanie come up with a list of questions and Daisy set up the camcorder tripod, Jon successfully forced Stoker to put the knife down and took away James’ notebook so she could focus her attention on wrangling her terrible boyfriend. 

Honestly, sometimes Melanie felt like the only person in the Archives who wasn’t constantly armed. She saw the penknife Basira kept in her strangely voluminous hijab. Why were she and Jon the only ones not trusted with weapons? When had Melanie lost weapon privileges?

“Despite what you might think,” Daisy said brusquely, when Melanie brought it up as Basira fixed a small microphone to Perry’s shirt, “being queer doesn’t automatically buff your melee skills.”

“Prove it,” Melanie said, before the rest of her sentence caught up with her. “Holy shit, was that Dungeons and Dragons talk? Daisy, do you - okay, great, will never bring this up again, understood.”

Melanie wondered if this made Daisy a barbarian. 

Five minutes later, Melanie was sitting at the table next to Jude Perry, both of them somewhat freshened up, as every other employee crowded into the other side of the room. Daisy counted down on her fingers - three, two, one - and Melanie took a deep breath before pasting a bright smile on her face. 

“Welcome back to the Archives, everybody! Today we’re doing a somewhat unusual format for your favorite vlogs at my least favorite workplace. We interrupt your regularly scheduled schadenfreude to bring you a special guest interview - long time viewer, professional fear demon Jude Perry!” She waited patiently for all of her coworkers to clap unenthusiastically. “Another shitty performance from our studio audience.” 

“It’s great to be here, Melanie,” Jude said smoothly, as if Melanie had invited her on as a special guest speaker instead of her having literally barged in here through a sentient hallway. She turned to the camera, flipping it the bird. “Eat _this_ , Cane!”

“Right,” Melanie said desperately, “so tell me, Jude, how does one get into fear demoning? Can you send your application in through GlassDoor, or do you have to know a guy who knows a guy?”

“The first step is to absolutely love fire,” Jude said seriously. Melanie nodded, as if this made any sense. “Fire is the best thing in the world. Absolutely - wow, absolutely fucking immaculate. You know that feeling when you see just, like, the most gorgeous woman you’ve ever seen, and you go - wow, she’s smoking. Fire’s like that. Except literally smoking.”

Jude Perry then proceeded to talk about fire for, and Melanie counted, about twenty minutes. 

“ - and that’s how I threw a guy out of the New York Stock Exchange window in 2008 through the power of fire.”

“Wow,” Melanie said. She had, unfortunately, been extremely enthralled the entire time. She still wasn’t entirely sure what fire had to do with trickle-down economics, but somehow she believed every word. Everybody else either looked extremely zoned out, extremely perturbed, or - in James’ case - furiously writing down every word Jude said. “That’s really incredible. Especially how Thatcher used arson to - anyway, but you never really answered my question.” At Jude’s incredulous squint, Melanie quickly continued, “What do you after you love fire? Like, what’s the steps?” At Jon’s intrigued look, Melanie quickly followed that sentence up with, “ _Hypothetically_.”

“Oh! Oh!” Michael thrust a hand in the air. “I can answer this one -” 

Basira roughly shoved their hand down. Helen patted their head. 

“You ever want something?” Jude asked bluntly. “So bad that it hurts? You know how it is. Your life sucks, you’re unhappy as fuck, and there’s _one_ thing in this world that brings you joy. Just one. For some of us it’s something that’s good for us, like jogging or yoga or what the fuck ever. For some people it’s just, you know, their fucking favorite telly show. But some of us...more of us than you’d think, Melanie...some of us really, really love what hurts us.” She smiled, sharp and wicked, and Melanie saw for the first time that some of her teeth seemed to be dripping. “Like a moth to the flame, humans will always want and love what’s bad for them.”

“...like junk food?”

“There is an insanity inherent in man,” Jude said philosophically, and Melanie saw Helen and Michael nodding. Worryingly enough, Martin and Stoker seemed to have gone very still, and were listening very attentively. “A call of the void. That feeling you have, when you stare into that bonfire, unable to tear your eyes away from its hypnotizing light, and you are blinded by something that you can never understand, can never touch. Every human has it. Some more than others. I find it thrilling, powerful - others hate it, hate themselves. Some were shoved into it, some chased it down. We know it’s bad for us. We don’t always like it. It doesn’t always make us feel good. But sometimes it feels so, so good to feel bad.” 

“...cool!” Melanie frantically made the motion for Daisy to cut the tape. “Well, that’s all we have time for, folks, see you tomorrow -”

“How do you stop it?”

It was Stoker, having pushed his way past the crowd, slamming his hands down on the interview table. Jude leaned back, sneering slightly, but Stoker barely even seemed to be looking at her. He was caught up in something, so much bigger than any of them could understand. 

“What if you feel like - like a demon sometimes?” Stoker cried, his words tinged with something Melanie had never heard from him before. “Like you’re being possessed by something that isn’t you? How do you get rid of it?”

But Jude just snorted, grinning slyly at Stoker, as if she knew something that he had yet to find out. “How do we rid ourselves of our own sins when there’s no god to forgive us, wolfie? How do we take back the words that have already been said? There’s no bringing back to life the people you’ve killed. What in hell or heaven makes you think that what’s inside you isn’t _you_?”

Stoker reeled back, as if slapped, and for the second time that she knew him he looked afraid. 

Daisy boredly chopped a hand through the air. “And...cut!”

  
  
  
  
  


Maybe it wasn’t a good idea that Jon had actually given Stoker and James work. 

It was a great way to terrorize them and keep them out of their hair. Melanie knew from experience that there was nothing more annoying than having to work while other people goofed off and pointedly had a lot of fun. If they were busy doing relentless busywork, it was both soul-crushing and stopped them from getting into hijinks. Melanie knew from experience that the last thing anybody wanted was James and Stoker feeling like they could do whatever they want. As opposed to Melanie, who was at her best when she could do anything she wanted. 

But after that terrifying demon Jude Perry had left the two had grabbed their boxes of busywork and disappeared into the library, yelling something about doing research. As that was, technically, their jobs, Jon couldn’t exactly tell them _not_ to do it. So long as they presented Jon with their finished work the next morning, there really wasn’t anything Jon could reasonably do without breaking their plausible deniability. 

Nobody felt great about it, but mostly everybody breathed a sigh of relief that they didn’t have to look at Stoker’s dumb pig face anymore. The rest of the day was spent occupied by Daisy and Jon pulling out the roll of butcher paper and drawing on the floor with Michael as Basira, Melanie, and Helen found some margaritas and gossiped about their psychological warfare against pigs. 

“I trained you kids _so_ well,” Helen sniffed, using a single claw to wipe a mock tear from her eye. “I’ve never been prouder to know you gang of layabouts. If you need an extra hand, just say the word - I’ve been meaning to try out this mental hospital on someone, and I need two juicy little guinea pigs. Get it? Pigs?”

“We don’t actually want them dead or insane,” Basira said flatly, sipping her fluorescent blue margarita. “That’d be a bit hypocritical.”

“Oh?” Helen tilted her head, eyes swirling. “Are you trying to get them to quit, then?”

“They can’t exactly quit,” Melanie confessed, twirling a little paper umbrella in her hand. 

“Fascinating!” Helen said, with the tone of voice that indicated she was well aware of that. “Then what’s your end goal here?”

Melanie and Basira looked at each other, somewhat uncomfortably. “Revenge?” Melanie finally suggested, almost uncertain. 

“Good enough for me, darlings! Personally, I think end goals are overrated. Sometimes you just have to be in for the _ride_.”

Melanie and Basira glanced at each other again - for the first time, wondering if they were really helping anybody, or if they were just making themselves feel better. 

Then they both simultaneously decided that, actually, it was totally worth it if the point was just to make themselves feel better. In fact, it was the definition of self-care. Melanie and Basira nodded at each other - confident that, if they weren’t necessarily doing the right thing, then at least they didn’t really care that they were doing the wrong thing. 

It wasn’t as if Stoker had stopped and felt _bad_ that he was trying to kill Jon for months. Why extend to him more courtesy than he had ever shown poor, innocent, himbo extraordinaire Jon? 

Still, something about the conversation with the fear demon whose entire goal in life was to make you doubt yourself made her doubt herself. Maybe that was why, as the clock struck five and everyone packed up their laptops and argued about the coffee shop they were going to hit up today, Melanie found her eyes lingering on Stoker and James’ bags and jackets still slung over their chairs. 

They didn’t really seem the type to stay late. Like, if Melanie was hypothetically forced by a supernatural contract that forced her to work at a shitty supernatural research institute until their middle aged boss croaked, she really wouldn’t stay late at all. Maybe they had lost track of time. 

Feeling like an overly sentimental idiot, Melanie shouted something vaguely about being back in a minute and slipped into the hallway. She heard muttered voices from the library, rising and falling, and Melanie took a second to curse her overly sentimental, kind, and generous personality before cracking the library door open and sliding inside.

James had, in a stunning moment of clown-to-clown communication with Basira, pulled out their plotting whiteboard. She seemed to be making the most convoluted t-chart of all time, with a ridiculous number of categories and words in each column. Stoker was flipping through a giant stack of what Melanie distantly recognized as statements, calling out a name or a few key words from each one - Melanie caught the term ‘homophobic vase’ - before Sasha wrote it down in a column on the board. They seemed to be in the middle of a fervent debate. 

“ - but fire has to go in the fear of death, right?”

“You heard that fucking lunatic. It’s not about the destruction, it’s about the desire to cause pain.” Stoker flicked one of the statements demonstratively. “Put it under ‘wanting to murder’. Put murder club under that, too.” Sasha obligingly crammed in another phrase in the column. “What about this one with the creepy mannequins?”

“She did feel like she was being watched by it,” Sasha said, tapping her lip with her marker, “maybe under invasion of privacy?”

“I’m really noticing a kind of uncanny valley theme, though -”

“Maybe add another column?” 

Melanie was in shock - shock that these two actually appeared to be doing something, shock that they were having a rational conversation that implied they were intelligent, shock that anybody had read the statements and found them relevant to their lives. 

“Oh my god,” Melanie said, “are you guys, like, actually working?”

The pair startled, James almost jumping a foot in the air. They had been so absorbed in what they were doing that they hadn’t even noticed her. Stoker whirled around in his seat, and James craned her head until Melanie walked a little further into the room. She couldn’t stop herself from squinting at the whiteboard, trying to make out the headings. 

Wanting to murder. Fear of pain. Spiral. Uncanny valley. Invasion of privacy. None of it made any sense. The huge stack of statements next to Stoker didn’t make any sense either. 

“Melanie!” James said, overly loudly, as Stoker hurriedly took a picture of the whiteboard. The minute his phone clicked, James wiped it clear as quickly as possible. “Funny running into you here! What can I do for you!”

“Uh.” Melanie scratched the back of her head. “It’s five. So…”

“Right!” James said, way too enthusiastically. “Well, we’re still, uh -”

“Sorting the boxes,” Stoker volunteered. 

“Sorting the boxes, so we might stay late! Get in some overtime. Go ahead and tell Jon that we’re just so dedicated to finishing our jobs -” Stoker snorted. “ - that we’re staying behind.”

Hm. Melanie squinted at the suddenly squeaky clean whiteboard, then at the two pigs doing their best to look completely innocent, which was almost comical on their evil little faces. “You know those statements are all bullshit, right?”

“They’re _mostly_ bullshit,” Sasha said eagerly, as Stoker frantically tried to mime shutting up. “But Jon had me scanning them into pdfs, and I found that no matter how many times I scanned some of them the file always ended up corrupted, so I put the corrupted ones into a pile and then I found _patterns_ , and I really love patterns, so -”

“You were literally just getting day-drunk with a ‘fear demon’ and her moppet of a fear demon intern,” Stoker said flatly, “and you’re telling me that every supernatural encounter is bullshit?”

“Not to mention some of this creepy office,” James muttered. “There’s something not right about Blackwood…”

Melanie rolled her eyes. God, there was a reason they’d been ignoring them all. Picking on Martin was like kicking a well-armed puppy: dangerous to yourself and just cruel. “Of course it’s not all bullshit. The universe’s full of weird shit. But so’s, like, space. Just because space is out there being weird doesn’t mean I need to understand it all.”

“In this metaphor your friends are aliens,” James said flatly. 

“Yeah? I’m not a bigot. Like, love is love.” Melanie huffed, already resigning herself. “Stay as late as you want. I’m just warning you, though, that getting overtime from Elias is like getting blood from a stone.”

Her friends wouldn’t stay waiting for much longer. Melanie left that small, dark library, which had never seen anything more exciting than Basira’s voracious appetite for boring literature and Daisy’s mid-day naps, shutting the door on James and Stoker and their weird little conspiracy theories that had very little to do with her life at all. 

But as Martin flushed when Jon talked his ear off about emulsifiers, as Basira casually looped her arm around Daisy’s, Melanie found herself thinking about some of the hastily scribbled smears on the whiteboard. The two, three, four statements which were, apparently, about clowns. 

Clowns, and skin. 

Her therapist would be disappointed in her if she knew. Melanie had overcome her clown phobia. She had even gone out to see IT with Daisy, who had patiently held her hand as she shook from clown fear. She was, like, totally over it. Melanie had gotten an A- in therapy and had the certificate to prove it. 

Really, it hadn’t been the traumatic witnessing of her father’s gorey death that had upset her. Everybody knew that sometimes hallways ate you, that monsters jumped from the pages of books, and that their world was neither fair nor safe. Everybody knew that, in one way or another, even if they didn’t think of it as such.

What had hurt, at the end of the day, was that nobody had believed her. She had been alone, completely and totally: no family, no friends, no hope. It hadn’t been anything new, of course, but it had still hurt. 

Had Melanie once cared about getting revenge, about understanding? About tracking down her father’s killers and - what, avenging them? What would that solve? She couldn’t stab a hurricane anymore than she could get Helen to stop eating people. Melanie didn’t have to understand the world to suffer from it. Sometimes understanding just made everything hurt so much worse, because at the end of the way you were left with the fact that no matter how hard you worked or what you did or how deeply you understood the spinning cogs of the universe, you were left alone with that pain.

Jon, strangely spooky, drawing Tim’s past out from him like a magician with a rope of handkerchiefs. Melanie had been right: what was the _point_ of knowing that? It didn’t make Stoker a better person. His traumatic backstory or whatever didn’t give him license to kill. Nothing did. 

But she still tried. Melanie still found herself weirdly fascinated with understanding why Stoker and James, two people who thought of themselves as deeply good and heroic people, did such bad things. She still loved recording and making documentaries, because the world was such a cool place and she wanted to see every inch of it. Right out of college, she had once harbored dreams of being an investigative reporter: someone who shone a light on injustices in the world and forced people to confront them. She had signed onto the Magnus Institute out of a desire to witness and see every little bit of weirdness the world had to offer. 

Melanie had almost forgotten that: that she liked life, even then, even now, and that she wanted to see more of it. That she liked people, and wanted to understand them, just because there was so much to understand. Sometimes she even wanted to help them. 

“Wow,” Melanie said out loud, “what am I, like, _doing_ with my life?”

“It’s best not to think about it,” Daisy said, patting her on the back. 

  
  


**Melanie:** so weird question

 **Melanie:** why do you purposefully jump into overly dangerous supernatural situations for the purpose of your booktube

 **Georgie:** I get bored!

 **Georgie:** Why do you ask?

 **Melanie:** i think my dads death gave me depression that i thought i had worked through but I actually kinda didnt because im still apathetic and detached from shit

 **Georgie:** oh, worm?

 **Georgie:** Look, life’s boring and dull and sad and meaningless and upsetting. I think we should do what sparks joy, you know? And sometimes what sparks joy is looting a haunted house. 

**Georgie:** or weird polycules

 **Melanie:** yeah. Even if caring is pointless you know its like worth it to care about people. Brightens up your life and everything. And have fun. Am I a hedonist?

 **Georgie:** Yes but that’s what I like about you!

 **Melanie:** :)

 **Georgie:** :)!

  
  


**Wednesday**

Melanie walked into the Archives to see a short, douchey looking blonde man with a Lichtenberg scar bossing around an increasingly homicidal Martin as he set up the lighting in the recording room. 

Melanie walked out of the Archives. 

“I _swear_ I didn’t do it on purpose,” Michael begged, looking as frazzled and stressed out as a teenage fear demon could look. They were dressed unnervingly like a Beatle in the 1960s psychedelic animated movie _The Yellow Submarine._ Complete with dumb little glasses. “We’re all technically protrusions of the same evil non-Euclidean concept so I can’t exactly get _rid_ of him even though it’s really annoying and confusing having two blond Michaels around.” Michael stopped short, looking thoughtful. “Or maybe that’s the point. Wow, the Spiral thinks of everything.”

“Why are you doing this to me.”

“I do torture people to sustain my existence,” Michael said apologetically, “and though I try not to do it to my friends you do have to admit it’s kind of funny.”

Melanie, knowing that some things she unfortunately had to face, went back inside the Archives. 

Michael “Call me Mike, it’s too annoying otherwise” Crew was some sort of infernal demon cousin of Helen and Michael. He was short, vain, ill-tempered, and seemed much more coherent than both Helen and Michael. If he hadn’t professed immediately, and with some surliness, that he was of the great Twisting, etc, etc, then Melanie would have figured for a regular Chelsea posh prick. Most importantly, he had a long standing feud with Jude Perry and a long-held desire to be on television. 

“I never even wanted this, you know,” Mike said, rich mustard yellow peacoat buttoned up firmly to his chin as he lounged in the stiff and uncomfortable desk chair as if it was a reclining sofa. “Nobody exactly chooses to get hit by lightning as a kid. Plenty of kids get hit by lightning every year and they don’t turn into - what are you calling them, fear demons? Fear demons.”

“About five hundred a year,” Jon volunteered, from where he was standing at the back of the recording room behind the camera with everyone else. 

“Right! I spend years of my life just trying to dodge this stupid thing. I go through every Barker I can find - and man, were some of them _not_ easy to get ahold of. But there was no point. It’s meaningless, all of it, everything infinitely meaningless, and you can just twist and twist and twist yourself into aching knots -

“That’s really something,” Melanie said, somewhat desperately. “What were you saying about how you became a fear demon?”

That snapped Mike back to himself. He shuddered, grimacing. “Right. You can’t fight fate sometimes, you know? There was nothing I could do. Once I gave up and accepted the insanity, turned around and faced my fear, you know, it got…”

“Better?” Stoker called, somewhat maniacally. “Once you faced your fear you defeated it and you won, right?”

“Would I be here if it did?” Mike Crew asked flatly. Stoker scowled, and James put a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t face it all. I just gave up. And when it ate me, as the Spiral poured itself into every crevasse and twisted the world all out of shape, all I could think was...at least it’s over, you know? At least I don’t have to fight anymore. There’s something beautiful, in giving up. In submitting.” 

Helen cheered from the corner. Michael shifted, a little uncomfortably, shoulders breaking into jagged hexagons. 

“You saw what Jude said yesterday, right?” Melanie asked, a little hesitantly. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Why? Why? “She made it sound as if going all...like _that_ was because it was already within her. It was just an escalation of the inevitable. But it sounds as if for you it was just...I don’t know, your own bad luck? What do you think is the truth?”

Behind the camera, Melanie was distantly aware of her friends. Martin and Stoker, looking anxious and tense. Jon and Basira, always curious, always aching to know. Daisy and James, inscrutable, mouths pressed in a thin line. There was an odd sense of tension about the moment, as if what Mike Crew had to say would change the way they understood the world around them on a dime. 

Maybe Mike knew this. He raised an eyebrow, somehow improbably. “You’re drawing a false dichotomy. There’s no color here, just a meaningless explosion of light. Truth’s a matter of angle - flip the problem upside down and you get a different solution. You’re asking me to explain the inexplicable, to put to words something too overwhelming to be understood. People better than you have gone insane from trying to understand, you know.” Something distant in his eyes gleamed. “Sometimes I did it to them.”

“Try,” Melanie said stubbornly, before faltering. “You...seem like you want to talk about it.”

Mike waited a second, just staring at her, eyes glassy and distant, never focusing. When he spoke again, there was a faint and distant buzzing behind his words. “Nobody makes it through life without pain. Every human is ripped apart and ripped open by something. Fear, pain, trauma, fear demons, the shittiness of human society - we are all hurt. The wind goes whistling through us. Very rarely is it our fault.” He paused, and Melanie thought for a second it was to breathe - but, of course, Mike’s chest did not rise or fall. “Some people move on. They rebuild and thrive, or at the very least heal. But some of us are bogged down in that pain and suffering. Some people don’t recover. Ripped open, wounds festering and leaking...some wounds do not heal, Melanie. That is the insanity Jude spoke of: a wound, always open, always festering.”

“Uh,” Melanie said. 

“These people are walking carrion, and there are vultures in this world which exist to consume them. Natural or supernatural, it’s all the same. And sometimes, these people who were eaten alive stand back up. They shamble back to civilization to spread that sickness, infect others, passing on that pain like an infection. It doesn’t really make us feel better. Sometimes it makes us feel worse. But...oh, sometimes it feels so good to feel so bad.”

Everybody stared at him. 

“Mike Crew, everybody!” Melanie announced, clapping. Everybody else hastily followed in clapping, their own studio audience. “Fear demon of the Spiral, part time Ambercrombie and Fitch model! Any parting words for our viewers, Mike?”

“You think you know your left and your right,” Mike said serenely, “but do you? Do you, really? Thanks for having me, Melanie.” Then he flipped off the camera. “And _suck it_ , Cane!”

Daisy raised her hand and chopped it in the air. “Cut!”

Because, apparently, he had _class_ in an hour, Melanie walked Mike Crew out of the Institute. Helen and Michael had good-naturedly heckled him on his performance, which led to a strangely familiar sniping match that got increasingly incoherent before Daisy physically picked Michael up and dumped them in Jon’s office. They had to take an alternate route to avoid Elias, and somehow they both got incredibly lost in the very familiar hallways of the Institute before Melanie glared fiercely at Mike and he guiltily set the hallways right again, but she finally stepped outside the Institute and breathed in the smoggy, moist, wonderful London air. 

Next to her, Mike was looking at her ruefully. Leaving the Institute seemed to bring him no relief - incapable of breathing, or maybe incapable of feeling that relief. 

“What do you study at uni?” Melanie asked, desperately hoping for a polite, small-talk conversation from one of these weird people. “Like, physics or something, right?”

Mike looked at her as if she was an idiot. “Philosophy. Obviously. “

“Right, my mistake.”

“I can drive someone insane with logic proofs. Do you want to see?”

“I think I’ll pass?”

“You want to know the reality of it, Melanie?” Mike said, in an act of whiplash that made Melanie dizzy. “So far as reality is anything, so far as truth is fiction?” Mike Crew scowled at her, and for the first time Melanie saw a strange infinity in his crazy blue eyes. “I don’t have to torture people to survive. I can drift through a normal life, play-act and imitate and pretend I’m one of you. The Is That Is Not What It Is doesn’t feed through me. It feeds _on_ me. It knows, and I know, that I’ll never belong. Reality doesn’t have to be wrong when I’m the one that’s wrong ”

How sad. Melanie wished that she didn’t understand. 

“Did it help to talk about it, at least?” Melanie asked hesitantly.

And Mike Crew, for the first time, smiled crookedly at her. “Yeah, actually. Thanks for understanding.”

“Anytime.”

Somehow, she meant it. 

  
  
  


After Melanie stood on the London sidewalk, watching Mike Crew twist into the crowd, she took the bus to Georgie’s place. 

She sat in the hard plastic seat the entire time, playing with her fingers, heart thumping in her chest. Halfway there, she suddenly realized that she was committing an extreme societal faux paus, and she hastily fumbled out her cell phone. She had a few missed texts - mostly from Jon, wondering where the fuck she was like a puppy with seperation anxiety - but she pressed Georgie’s name anyway. 

**Melanie:** Hey, hope you’re doing well! Work brought me to your neighborhood, and as part of my ongoing praxis I refuse to do anything productive, so if you’re at home would you mind if I dropped by? No sweat if you’re busy!

She lived in anxiety for five minutes as the bus rattled over the potholed streets before her phone beeped cheerfully. 

**Georgie:** Sure! I wanted to take a break from work, anyway. I’ll leave the door unlocked! :)

Melanie’s jackrabbiting heart leaped into her throat. 

Was she being clingy? They’d been texting pretty nonstop for the last three days, but to just invite yourself over to their house - like, it’s too much, right? She was jumping the gun. She was being too obvious, too desperate, too needy. Melanie had driven away everyone in her life by being too much, and now she was going to be too much for Georgie, and she would lose this person who made sunbursts light up in her chest. 

She stood in front of the Barker-Keay-Sims condo, heart thumping in her ears, trying desperately to screw her courage to the sticking place and failing miserably. She was going to push too hard, want too much, and ruin everything. Nothing good had ever come of wanting something so badly that it burned. All it did was burn yourself. 

Melanie thought about the insanity inherent in man. 

She knocked, then stepped inside. 

Georgie was in the living room, curled up on a recliner with a laptop precariously balanced in her lap. On the couch perpendicular to her was Gerry Keay, who apparently never got _off_ the couch, leafing through a very large and somewhat intimidating book. Something about it oozed maliciousness. 

Oh, good lord. Melanie blanched. “Is that a Barker? You shouldn’t read those, they -”

“Prey upon the weakness in the human mind and exploit it to drive you towards insanity?” Gerry said, without looking up from his book. He turned the page. “My mind is pure high grade teflon, baby. Everything slides right off.”

“That’s why nothing gets through your thick skull,” Georgie said fondly. She was dressed just as well as when Melanie had last seen her, wearing high-waisted black shorts and with a sunny crop top with retro-type lettering scrolling along the top - ‘HAVING FUN ISN’T HARD WHEN YOU HAVE A LIBRARY CARD!’. She was wearing opaque round glasses again, tinted yellow instead of red, rendering her expression inscrutable.

But when she saw Melanie in the doorway her entire face lit up, smiling broadly and waving her in, and there was nothing inscrutable about that. 

“Mels! So good to see you! My day needed a little bit more spice.” She set her computer aside and quickly ran up to hug her tightly. Her perfume smelled like flowers. Melanie’s brain was overcome by it. Georgie released her, taking a second to mockingly glare back at Gerry. “I need a break from _someone_ reading dangerous literature in the foyer.”

“I am both a god and can kill god, and I do not care if there is a difference.”

“He says the same thing about Karl Marx.” She rolled her eyes, turning back to Melanie. “Want to take a walk? I need some fresh air. Well, you know, for a given meaning of fresh air.”

Through a dry mouth, Melanie said, “Sure.”

“If that bitch Annabelle drops in on your show, tell her she owes me money!” Gerry called. 

“You mean she owes _me_ money,” Georgie pointed out. 

“This house is socialist.”

“This house is full of freeloaders.”

“You’re redistributing your wealth.”

“Every day is like this,” Georgie said to Melanie, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to mind. “You sure you’re okay with me rambling about my day to you?”

Melanie sighed. “If you’re okay with me bitching about supernatural jerks the whole time. I don’t suppose either of you know what the fuck they’re always on about. Insanity of man my arse.”

Gerry looked up from his book for the first time, surprised. “Uh - yeah, actually, I know quite a bit about it. Like, a ton. My Mum was a researcher with the Institute. Do you want to know about the fourteen fears of man or beast, or -”

“You know,” Melanie said, overcome with a distraught melancholy, “will it help?”

Gerry stared at her. 

“You know,” Gerry said, “I really just think it’ll make you feel worse.”

“Then pass.” Melanie hated her life. “I feel like it would just decrease my lifespan.”

Georgie laughed, bright and clear. “You know what they say about life - no one makes it out alive.”

It was a cold and drizzly April, the last remnants of a spring chill carried in on the breeze, but Melanie couldn’t seem to feel it. The sky was overcast, the promise of rain heavy in the air, but the raindrops never quite fell. It felt almost as if they were waiting, as if the sky was holding its breath so it wouldn’t interrupt the soft bubble of Melanie and Georgie. 

They walked close to each other, peeling away from the busy London streets to wander aimlessly through the residential streets of Chelsea. Georgie chattered lightly about her work, about the stats on her new channel, about the last rare book she had successfully excavated from an Egyptian tomb. The breeze tousled Melanie’s flyaway red hair, flying into her mouth and forcing her to pull it back behind her ear. Georgie’s eyes followed the motion, lightning quick, so fast Melanie thought that she might have imagined it. 

“Won’t you get in trouble for skipping work?” Georgie asked finally, standing at an intersection. Cars chugged lethargically down the street, sputtering and spewing.

Melanie shrugged listlessly. “What are they going to do, fire me? Lately all we’ve been doing is acting as a crossroads for the strange and unusual.” As Georgie’s inquisitive look, Melanie sighed. “Mike Crew dropped by today. He’s a -”

“Oh, Mikey! I’m surprised he dropped by, normally he’s so antisocial. What did you interview him about? Those Spiral types never really shut up.”

Melanie explained in short order, trying to wrangle the conversation to a kind of sense. It was difficult, as if the words themselves defied any sense - which, of course, they did. 

“I just want to - I don’t know, try and get over stuff?” Melanie cried, frustrated. “I thought I was over that shit with my dad. I thought I was over all of that anger and loneliness. But everywhere I turn, it’s just this same old bullshit hurting my friends or making me work with cops or killing Gertrude Robinson and forcing me into demon contracts. I just want to move on.”

Georgie hummed, lightly stepping over a tepid puddle. “Sometimes our past has a way of catching up with us. Usually, when that happens to me, it means I didn’t get over it as well as I thought I did.”

“Maybe that happens to a lot of people.” Melanie shivered, remembering Mike Crew’s words. “Maybe we’re all just walking around with...I don’t know, big gaping wounds. They’re awful and gross and if you leave them alone for too long you bleed out, but...they’re invisible. And sometimes you can’t see them or feel them. Maybe sometimes you only realize they were ever there once they’re gone.” Melanie felt herself crumple. “But if you can’t see them or feel them, how are you supposed to know if they’re gone or not?”

“I think you’re doing all you can,” Georgie said softly. Her hand drifted to Melanie’s before stopping, and gently falling away. “You’re staying connected with your friends. You’re creating, living, trying to do the right thing. You’re trying to make the best of a bad hand. I don’t know, isn’t that all we can do? Just doing what makes us happy, and what’s good for us...maybe it won’t always fix things, but maybe it’s good enough.”

Melanie didn’t know how to tell her how badly she wanted Georgie to take her hand, to feel her cold little hand in hers, to squeeze it tight and feel that pressure. To feel connected, to not feel alone, to feel alive. Maybe it would jump start her heart, and send it beating again. 

“Do you always do what makes you happy?” 

Georgie’s hand hovered in the air. 

“No,” she said, “not always.”

Melanie reached out and grabbed Georgie’s hand by the wrist. The other woman froze, knees locking, and Melanie found herself freezing too. They stood there, in that dirty street under a grey sky swelling with rain, looking at each other. 

Melanie didn’t know what Georgie was seeing. She hoped it was what she was seeing too. 

“Do you want to do this?” Melanie found herself asking, through a dry mouth and a heart going a million miles per hour. 

“I’m not very good at it,” Georgie said. Melanie saw herself reflected in her opaque glasses, distorted and desperate, all head and wide eyes. 

“That’s not what I asked.” 

“No, I guess it isn’t.”

Melanie waited. 

Slowly, as if the press of Melanie’s skin would hurt, Georgie slid her hand into Melanie’s. For the first time, she looked as scared as Melanie felt. 

“Can we talk about it?”

“Yeah,” Melanie said dizzily, as everything happened so much around her, “I think we should.”

And as they walked back to Georgie’s home, hand in hand, the sky burst open and it began to rain. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Thursday**

Melanie texted on ahead of time to make sure that their Archives weren’t infiltrated by weirdly intense fear demons. Jon swore up and down that it was just him in the Archives right now, that there were no unfortunate fear demon surprises, and actually did she know why they were getting so many fear demons lately, and when was she going to let him interview one? 

Seeing as most of the fear demons they’ve met so far seemed two seconds and a spilled coffee away from homicide, and most people who talked to Jon for more than two seconds kind of wanted to kill him, Melanie was leaning towards ‘never’. But they did say that the best way to learn was through doing, and investigative reporting would be a useful redirection of Jon’s insanely invasive tendencies…

After performing an impressive display of acrobatics to avoid Elias Bouchard, Melanie found herself tumbling into the Archives at her earlier than usual 8:50. Jon’s door was cracked, as he had been in since seven no matter how many times they tried to break him of that terrible habit. It had been a miracle just getting him to leave by five, and had involved a judicious application of force. 

It was kind of nice being in the office a little earlier, Melanie reflected as she dumped her backpack under her desk. Quiet and still, she could kick her feet up on her desk and bask in the solitude. She could rearrange Daisy’s desk. Hide Basira’s books. Mess with Martin’s - okay, she wasn’t messing with Martin’s anything. The guy always came in at 9 on the dot anyway, bright eyed and bushy tailed, as if he was working this job completely voluntarily and felt a strong sense of passion and self-efficacy about his work. 

Which...could be the case, for all Melanie knew. Didn’t he only sign up because he had a crush on Jon? It wasn’t as if Jon had gotten any less attractive, even knowing that he was locked into this job for the rest of time. Melanie was forced to grudgingly admit that he had gotten even more attractive since he started growing out his hair and pulling it back into a ponytail or bun, real Daveed Diggs as Lafayette style. Whenever they went out modelling representatives stopped him in the street. It was grotesque, and also just kind of unfair. Melanie couldn’t pull off _anyone_ from Hamilton. 

Interrupting her daydreams about singing Hamilton’s part in Helpless with a corset-wearing Georgie, Melanie noticed that James’ desk chair still had her bag slumped across it. Stoker’s bomber jacket was draped along its back. Melanie narrowed her eyes at the incriminating display. They must have gotten to work early, to avoid getting yelled at by Jon. As if that was _possible_. But then why had Jon told her that he was the only one in the Archives?

God, he was so unobservant. Melanie sighed, standing up and resigning herself to checking in on Misuse of Force & Aggravated Assault. Maybe she could convince Elias to transfer them to Artifact Storage. He would probably go for it, if she could guarantee him a cut of their life insurance payout - 

But when she opened the door to the library, only to see Stoker and James surrounded by a _ridiculous_ number of statements, she suddenly had different problems. She could already tell that Artifact Storage wouldn’t survive these two.

This time, they noticed her much more quickly. Stoker’s head jumped up from where he was bending over a piece of butcher paper from the stash they kept for Michael, hair in messy disarray and take-out box of old Chinese slumped on the floor. His eyes were baggy, and for the first time Stoker looked a little less than perfect. James didn’t let up, referencing her notebook as she annotated what looked like an extensive timeline. 

Stoker gaped at her, eyes slightly bloodshot. “What the fuck are you doing here at five am?”

“Dude,” Melanie said, for the first time feeling the slight tinges of pity for the two idiots, “it’s almost nine. It’s time to start the day.”

“Shit.” Stoker prodded James, who was ignoring both of them. “Sash, we lost track of time again.”

“It doesn’t make any sense!” James cried, tugging at her curly caramel hair with one hand. “How old was Helen when Gertrude shoved her into Sannikov Land? Was she in her twenties or was she in her forties? It just doesn’t make any sense!”

“Helen’s not really in the business of making any sense,” Melanie said blankly. “What the fuck are you two doing?”

“Our jobs,” James spat. She stood up, wincing slightly as she shook circulation back into her legs. She had ditched her professional shoes and was left in stockings, hair rumpled and messy. The table was littered in coffee cups and more take-out. Had they even fucking gone home? Jesus, talk about try-hards. “We have a theory. And you are going to stop fucking ignoring us and you are going to _listen_.”

“Uh,” Melanie said, a little scared, and unfortunately a little turned on, “okay?”

She was so live-blogging this to Georgie. 

Thirty minutes later, the entire Archives sans Jon (at Stoker’s insistence), were gathered in the library, sitting in a half-circle of chairs that ringed Basira’s whiteboard. Basira was very upset that her whiteboard was stolen. Daisy was still playing Angry Birds on her phone. Martin was knitting a nice little shawl for Jon with suspiciously sharp needles. James and Stoker, who were standing at either side of it wielding dry erase markers like weapons, didn’t seem to care too much. Next to James was a very large cork board propped on a chair, which had a ridiculous number of statements pinned to it, the butcher paper timeline, and what looked like a dramatis personae. They looked like they had pulled an all-nighter, discovered that aliens were real, and were dead-set on proving it. Everybody else looked very tired, and like they didn’t want to be here. 

Unfortunately, she was not allowed to vlog it. What a waste of drama. 

“We’ve known that the supernatural has existed for years,” James started grimly, apparently taking point. “At first glance, it all seems pointless and disconnected. Vampires here, werewolves there, malevolent creatures of darkness hiding in the closet and guys who eat paper or staple meat to their walls living next door. With so much noise in the signal, it’s almost impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. Or that’s what we _thought_.”

“Oh my god, please get to the point,” Basira groaned. 

“But if you look at the big picture, then a distinct pattern emerges,” Stoker said firmly, poking the whiteboard with his capped marker. “Almost all validated statements we found - and there _are_ validated statements - followed themes. Themes of fire, or themes of uncanny valley, or themes of invasion of privacy. It’s all connected. It’s not just this random assembly of events and bullshit, it has a _pattern_. There’s meaning to everything.”

“So we went through as many Statements as we could,” James said, eyes deranged. She said it just like that, ‘Statements’, all capitalized and everything. “And we were able to separate them into about eight different categories. There might be more or less, we aren’t sure. We found this book by Smirke -”

“The architecture guy?” Melanie asked, surprised. “What does he have to do with anything?”

James faltered. “You know him?”

“Melanie’s an architecture buff,” Daisy grunted. 

Basira just rolled her eyes. “Who keeps on pretending European architecture has _any_ redeeming qualities.”

“I did a mini-documentary about it for my thesis,” Melanie confessed, embarrassed.

“...anyway, he had this proposal of fourteen fears of man and beast.” James held up a thick and boring looking book as Melanie narrowed her eyes. Why was that familiar? “We went through it and decided that it was probably bullshit, but it’s what gave us the idea.”

“The important thing here is that these supernatural occurrences have puppeteers behind the scenes.” Stoker drew a line between the columns, connecting every separate theme. “They aren’t just random happenstance, they’re _purposeful_ . They’re like this - this Lovecraftian force, leaking into our world and influencing and corrupting it. Changing the order of nature, changing the nature of _people_. They’re evil incarnate.” James picked up the corkboard, holding it up to show them the timeline. “Every few years, one of the Entities -”

“That’s a stupid name,” Daisy said.

“Agreed,” Martin said, needles clacking. “It just sounds so evil.”

“They are evil,” James said flatly. 

“You shouldn’t prescribe human morality to inhuman extra-dimensional beings,” Martin scolded. 

“If these beings really exist,” Basira muttered. “If there’s a conspiracy going on, I don’t know why _James_ and _Stoker_ found out about it.” Left unsaid: instead of Basira, who was very insistent that she was the smartest person in the Archives. She was, but mostly out of lack of anybody legitimately intelligent. 

“If they’re evil incarnate we should call them Stokers,” Melanie called, high-fiving Daisy. “Gotttem!”

“Every few years, one of the Stokers tries to crack open the Earth like a walnut and take it over,” James said loudly, ignoring Stoker’s offended sputtering. “Gertrude Robinson, the old Archivist, spent most of her time running around preventing them from happening.”

“Wait,” Martin said, raising a hand. “Gertrude Robinson did anything?”

But Basira just looked thoughtful. “That would explain why she asked me to get her that block of C-4 that one time.”

“How did you - never mind.” Melanie had learned a long time ago not to ask questions she didn’t want to know the answers to. 

“Gertrude Robinson sacrificed all of her assistants to the cause,” James said severely, pointing to the dramatis personae on her board. “Mary Keay, Fiona Law, Emma Harvey - though apparently she had been killed by Fiona and Sarah, who seemed to go on to become a fear demon of the Space entity, which might just literally be Space - and, get this, Helen Richardson!”

Everyone stared blankly at her. 

James deflated. “Fear demon that serves as part of the Stoker of lies and deceit?”

“Can we stop calling them Stokers?” Stoker cried. “It’s rude and confusing!”

“Fine, Entity, we’ll stop.” James pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s the same lady. Gertrude pushed her into Sannikov land, when she was... _some_ age...and fed her to the Spiral. Which, by the way, was one of the Stokers that Smirke listed. She must be just like Mike Crew - who were forced into their role as fear demons instead of embracing it like Jude Perry. Did you guys know she’s a cult leader? They have a web page. That looks like it hasn’t been updated since 1995.”

“We found Callum Brodie’s Xbox One profile,” Entity said, “who, by the way, is _another_ cult leader, but he beat me in Halo in like two seconds and I didn’t get the chance to talk to him.”

“Bro,” Daisy said, “you suck at Halo that bad? Scrub.”

“I rank in League,” Entity snapped, “so hop off my dick.”

“Epic self-own there.”

“Big talk from the woman who probably mains Tracer in Overwatch.”

“Overwatch is for weebs. I only play Splatoon.”

“Then _you_ go beat Callum Brodie in Splatoon -”

“There’s more than one person in England named Helen,” Basira said, almost pityingly. 

James silently withdrew a photograph from the corkboard and passed it to Basira. Melanie craned her head to get a look at it. It seemed to be a group photo taken on an old-timey film camera. Unlike most group photos, the members looked a little as if they had been held at gunpoint to participate. Most of them were grimacing. In the center, a dark-skinned woman with a truly mind-boggling perm looked slightly terrified. Next to her stood a white woman with a kind face. A tall white man with a very unkind face and far too many tattoos had an arm slung around her shoulder, a baby nestled in the crook of his other elbow. 

“Should I tell Gerry that we found his baby pictures?” Melanie asked the crowd. 

“I dunno,” Daisy said, squinting at the woman in the center. “It doesn’t _look_ like her. Look, the dimensions are all wrong.”

“Yeah,” Martin said, peering at the photo over his glasses, “she looks like she only has three.”

“She could just have two,” Melanie pointed out optimistically, “she’s standing facing the camera, we don’t know what’s going on to the left -”

“I am _forced_ to believe you all aren’t as stupid as you pretend, because otherwise I will literally go insane,” James said loudly, snatching the photograph back. “The point I’m trying to make is that we are in _danger_ . The world is in danger. Elias Bouchard is _definitely_ some sort of door to door salesman for that Invasion of Privacy thing.” She fiercely glared at all of them, daring them to argue with her. “And it’s obvious that he’s turned Jon into one of them.”

Everybody stared at her. 

Melanie cautiously and carefully raised a hand. “Are you saying that Jon -”

“Who cries when he sees a spider -” Daisy said. 

“Who gets so stressed out during Jeopardy he has to go lie down,” Basira pointed out.

“You’re saying that the most _darling_ , _perfect_ , _sexy_ man,” Martin said, perhaps unconvincingly, “is an evil fear door to door salesman? That’s just impossible.”

“Are we still calling them fear demons or can we call them fear door to door salesman?” Basira asked. “I’ve been trying to make fear djinn catch on but you’re all too culturally Christian.”

“I’m, like, super offended by that,” Melanie, proud atheist, said. 

“Did you all forget what he _did_ to me?” Entity yelled, and everybody quieted. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, or the rumpled shirt, but there was something weird and desperate in his eyes. Something driven to the edge, ready to fall over. Melanie guiltily changed her name for him in her head back to Stoker. “Bastard _brainwashed_ me! I’m sorry if that was just another wacky day for you maniacs, but it was fucking awful! And I’m _never_ letting it happen again - not to me, not to Sasha, and not even to you fucking people. You’re all bitches, but not even _you_ deserve that.” His breath had grown heaving and strangled, fists clenched, and James carefully put a hand on his shoulder.

Her expression creased in sympathy. “It’s going to be okay, Tim.”

“It won’t!” Stoker shook her off, ignoring her hurt expression. “We’re just puppets dancing on Bouchard’s strings. Sooner or later he’s going to get tired of jerking us around. And _none_ of us are going to survive it.” He locked eyes with each of them, something hard and cold in his eyes. “None of us deserve that. And he’s going to use Jon to do it.”

Silence stretched across the room for a second. Melanie found herself looking to Daisy and Basira for reassurance, only to see them looking at her for it. Martin was looking at her too, as if he wanted her to say something. As if he needed it. 

They were looking at her. When had that started? Why hadn’t Melanie noticed? She was hardly the girl with the plan. That was Basira, she was the...leader, or whatever. But Basira looked just as shaken, just as scared, even if she was pretending to hide it. 

Maybe they needed her. Maybe someone, anyone, needed Melanie. How could this be meaningless, when they needed her?

Melanie stood up roughly, ignoring the grind of chair against hardwood, and propped her hands on her hips. “That’s not going to happen.”

“How much longer can you ignore reality?” Stoker yelled, thumping his fist against the whiteboard. “We have all of the proof, right here. How much longer are you going to _ignore_ us?”

“It’s not going to happen,” Melanie said, with calmness she did not feel, “because we aren’t going to let it.” She set her mouth, setting her expression as resolute as she could. “Jude and Mike Crew said it themselves. You turn into a fear demon when you’re hurt, right? When you’re just - blasted with that supernatural bullshit, and it hurts you, and it turns you into something nobody should have to be.” She pointed to the statements. “We haven’t been _letting_ Jon read the statements. He’s still safe, mostly, I think. Between us protecting him, us stopping the fear demons or pigs or whatever from hurting him, and his really impressive ability to deny the obvious, we can make it so that Elias Douchard never gets his slimy claws into him.”

“You can’t think that’ll work,” James said crisply, folding her arms. “What Bouchard wants, he gets. I’m proof enough of that.”

A realization clicked into place in Melanie’s mind, and it was like she had always known. “Bouchard doesn’t know what he wants. He’s pretending to be somebody he’s not. For all of his really vague grand plans, I’m not sure he even really _wants_ anything. He’s...just like the rest of us, I think.” She snapped her fingers at Basira and James, who started. “You two are the queens of blackmail. I’m sure you can dig up some dirt on him, right? If he’s going to play dirty, we can do that too.” She turned to Martin, Daisy, and Stoker, who all looked alarmed to be put in the same category. “And you guys can stop him if he tries doing any evil fear demoney stuff, or if any of the supernatural bullshit tries to hurt him. None of them want to, anyway, they know I won’t let them on my show if I do. ”

“I’ve been doing that for years now,” Daisy said, straight faced. “It’s a full time job. Something about that man’s face screams kidnap bait.”

“Then keep doing it!” Melanie walked up to the whiteboard, rapping it with her knuckle. “You know what I think? I think that when stuff hurts us, we want to make sense of it. We want - like, a bad guy, a reason, some kind of villain. I think it’s harder to accept that sometimes bad shit happens randomly for no reason and that there’s nothing we can do about it. We - we _want_ Stokers, because they make sense and people just hate shit that doesn’t make sense. At least then we have something to take revenge on, right?” Dad flickered through her mind, and Melanie turned to face her friends. She put her hands on her hips, trying to radiate sincerity. “Smirke fell into that trap. But we are _not_ dumb straight old white men. We are here, we are queer, and we don’t care!”

“Sasha and I aren’t -”

“If someone fucks with us, we fuck with them back.” Melanie pumped a fist into the air. “Bouchard fucked with us, so we’re fucking with him. But we are _not_ going to obsess about the cold machinations of a malevolent universe. God’s dead -”

“Hey!” Basira and Sasha said, somehow simultaneously. 

“A malevolent god’s better than none, in my opinion,” Martin said mildly. 

“ - and we killed him. Archive assistants get even. Archive assistants protect their own. But Archive assistants do _not_ do work unnecessarily.” 

But Martin cheered, and Basira clapped, and even Daisy cracked a smile. When Melanie looked behind her, she saw something strange in James and Stoker’s faces: a kind of strange acceptance, a sublime relief. 

They really must have been scared. They really must have felt so alone.

Nobody deserved that. Did they? 

“We’re a team,” Melanie said firmly, looking Stoker and James firmly in the eyes. “And nothing’s going to hurt you, so long as we’re here. Okay?”

“Yeah,” James said, and her cold mask broke into a raw relief. “Okay.”

The special, strange, and profound moment was, of course, broken by Jon.

The cheering must have tipped him off. He poked his head into the library, blinking owlishly behind his nerdy little glasses. He seemed surprised to see them all sitting in a half-circle and obviously talking to each other. Stoker dived for the whiteboard and flipped it so only the blank side showed. James tried, ineffectually, to whistle. 

“What’s...going on?” Jon asked, as if he was afraid to know. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Daisy said flatly. 

Jon, who knew better than to argue with Daisy, just nodded. “Right. In that case, everybody, do go back to work. Nothing isn’t going to do itself.”

“Yes, sir!” Melanie cried, mostly sarcastically, and was rewarded with the sound of everyone laughing. 

It felt good. It even, maybe, felt important. 

In a world where nothing was important, meaningful, or purposeful, could the strange thing they all built together mean anything? If it was impossible to really be happy, to have life really be perfect, wasn’t trying good enough? Was trying to be as happy as possible enough? 

Melanie didn’t know. She didn’t know why she wanted to try. 

But maybe she didn’t have to know everything. 

  
  
  
  
  


Melanie was trying to feed a bill into the vending machine, desperately mashing the button for a Mars Bar while Martin unhinged his jaw like a snake and shoved an entire cinnamon roll into it, when she looked up to see a short woman grinning brightly at her. 

She cursed, dropping her bill.

“Mmmf?” Martin said. 

Today had been surprisingly productive, in the worst way. After Stoker and James tried to convince them that those ‘Entity’ things existed, failed, and they all decided as a team to enroll Jon in a Ferret Protection Program (FPP, for short), they all actually felt as if they had a goal in mind. Basira and James were furiously doing something with a few laptops, a computer tower, and a VPN in the corner, and in the other corner Stoker was showing Daisy his hit list of possible enemies as Daisy took notes. Martin had made good progress on his shawl, too. 

“Hello!” the woman said. She had perfectly curled shiny auburn hair, like the picture of a fifties housewife. She was wearing a cute little overalls get up, with big spots of red blush on her cheeks, a beret jauntily perched on top of her hair. She pinged Melanie’s gaydar hard. “I’m Megan. It’s good to meet you!”

Melanie blinked at her. Martin gagged on his cinnamon roll behind her. “You don’t look like a Megan.”

“Wow! You Archive types really are as smart as they say.” That could mean anything, but okay. “You caught me! My name’s Nikola Orsinov. It’s good to meet you, Melanie!”

Melanie squinted at the strange looking woman, smiling a perfect white smile. Childhood Russian lessons flooded back into her brain. “Nikola Orsinov? Isn’t that a male name?”

Nikola smiled. “Yes!”

“Uh.” Okay, whatever.

“It’s pronounced closer to Orsinoff, really.”

“Good for you, I guess?” Melanie paused a beat. “So, is your name Megan or Nikola?”

“I was hoping to get interviewed for your show!” Nikola-or-maybe-Megan chirped. She couldn’t have been more than one hundred fifty cm. “I was born a poor Russian ringmaster in a cold winter. One hundred years later, I met a strange English clown with a terrible name, and hollowed him out to use as a puppet in my dancing mouse troupe.”

“Okay,” Melanie said, wishing she had the energy to feel terrified, “that’s cool and all, but I’m afraid that we’re not taking any interviewees today. Can you try coming back tomorrow? Or never?”

Megan-or-maybe-Nikola pouted. “But I wanted to meet your Mr. Archivist!” Alarm bells blared in Melanie’s mind immediately, and when Melanie glanced to her left she saw that Martin had procured one of his largest knives from somewhere. “I wanted to see how he was coming along. If he was...you know…” She leaned in, as if she was sharing a secret. “Smooth enough?”

Both Melanie and Martin stared at her.

Martin swallowed the last remnants of his bun. “Jon has a very rigorous skincare routine.”

“That’s so nice! Not quite what I meant, though.”

“Oh? What did you mean?”

“You know! If he was...finished baking?”

Martin’s knife glinted in the fluorescent light. “I don’t know what you mean, actually.”

Nikola/Megan stared at Martin. Martin stared at Megan/Nikola. Some wordness and inscrutable animosity passed between them, like two lions facing down over a fresh kill. Melanie felt oddly like the fresh kill. 

“Your argument is convincing!” Nikogen said finally and abruptly, “You’re completely right, Martin. I don’t think kidnapping is the answer. I’ll bring up the matter with Elias.”

“That’s great,” Martin said, improbably pleasant. “Bye, now!”

“Bye now!” Megola waved cutely at them, pulling a cutesy victory sign. “You’ve foiled me again, kids! Ha ha! Give your Archivist - oh, I mean _Jon_ \- a big kiss for me!”

“I sure will!” Martin said, somehow completely sincerely. “Have a nice day!”

The strange little woman laughed. Martin also laughed. They laughed together. 

Then the strange woman looked at Melanie, eyes flashing in the fluorescent light, and Melanie realized for the first time that they weren’t eyes at all. They were painted on, black as pitch, reflecting the light in a shallow shimmer.

“You know,” Nikola said, almost randomly, “I thought it might be a real laugh seeing you again, Melanie. The kind of laugh you’ve been holding in for a long time before you just _explode_ with it. But that’s not the case, is it?” She tilted her head, almost cutely, almost alien. “You aren’t afraid. Not anymore. There’s nothing there for me. And that’s not very _fun_ , now _is_ it?”

“Uh,” Melanie said, “okay?”

“Ta - ta!”

The bizarre short little clownpunk woman skipped off, whistling a theme that sounded strangely similar to ‘The Merry Go Round Broke Down’ - dedicated to the aesthetic, that woman was - as she went. Melanie turned to Martin, whose knife was securely tucked away and replaced with his knitting needles. His shawl was really taking shape. Was that a giant skull in the middle?

“What was that all about?”

“No idea,” Martin said cheerfully. “I don’t think she’s going to bother Jon again, though.”

“I guess that’s the important thing.” Melanie settled on bending down to pick up her bill from the floor. She looked down at it, and saw that it had been replaced with Monopoly money. “Aw, man. That was my last quid.”

“It’s okay, I got it.” Martin withdrew a bill from his own pocket, feeding it into the machine. He half-smiled at her. “We gotta stick together, right?”

“Yeah.” Melanie found herself smiling back. “FPP, right?”

“Jon’s fursona,” Martin whispered reverently, and Melanie _really, really_ didn’t want to know.

At least that Nikola or Megan person wouldn’t be a problem again. 

  
  
  


**Friday**

The next day, right before the end of the day, Stoker got an email from Elias. 

The Archives had settled into an easy lull. Martin was chattering happily about his upcoming trip to India to ‘learn more about his Grandmother’s traditional recipes’ to a vibrating Basira, who was struggling not to ask how many grandmothers he had. Daisy and James were silently playing a strangely intense game of Minesweeper against each other. Stoker was squeezing a grip trainer, and Jon was taking his afternoon nap in his office. 

Meanwhile Melanie was busy having a panic attack about her imminent date with Georgie. They were going out to eat that night, and knowing Georgie it would be impossibly fancy. Melanie wasn’t sure if she owned anything fancy enough! She didn’t have any nice clothing at all! Should she borrow something from Jon? No, there was no way that Georgie wouldn’t recognize her roommate’s clothes -

“Elias wants to see me,” Stoker said curtly, standing up from his chair grimly and throwing his jacket over his arm. “If I’m not back in two hours, send a rescue party.”

Everybody froze. James blanched, reaching out to grab his sleeve. “Wait, Tim, I’ll come with you -”

But he just shook her loose. “No, no point. We should maintain the pretense.” He smiled weakly at her. “I bet he just wants to give me a raise.”

“He’s gonna ask you to snitch,” Daisy said darkly. “If you snitch we’ll know.”

Martin slowly drew a line across his throat. Stoker blanched. 

“Got it. I’ll...be back, hopefully.”

He stepped out of the Archives quietly, a strange and drastic difference from his loud entrance in every room, and everybody sat in quiet discomfort as the door clicked shut. 

James hunched over her desk, desperately biting her nails, terrified and barely hiding it. Martin glanced at Jon’s door, but it was firmly shut for his nap. He got cranky if he was interrupted. 

They sat in awkward silence for a few minutes. Basira pulled her book up closer to her face, scowling angrily at its boring contents, and Daisy aggressively jammed the keys for Minesweeper. The strangely intense clack of Martin’s knitting needles echoed through the silent and tense air. 

She couldn’t take this. If she could do something, she had to. Melanie stood up abruptly, sending her own chair skittering back, and stuffed her phone in her pocket. “Nobody go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

“That’s dangerous, let me go with you -” Daisy immediately started, standing up, but Melanie just shook her head. 

“I won’t engage or interfere, I promise. Don’t worry.” She flashed her own reassuring smile, fooling nobody. “Just recon. No sweat.”

She stepped out of the Archives, feeling strangely as if she was leaving a safehouse for the cold and dangerous wilderness outside. 

She had forgotten how malevolent and uncomfortable the rest of the Institute felt at times. The hideous amount of Eye imagery seemed to pierce through her, leaving her always feeling uncomfortable and watched. God, Elias was such a creep. As she silently climbed the stairs, her footsteps echoing in the dim cement stairwell, Melanie couldn’t fight the sense of anxiety swelling in her gut. 

If you weren’t afraid, Melanie told herself firmly, then they had no foothold in you. You were teflon. There was nothing to eat - no weakness, no vulnerabilities. No open wound to drip poison inside. Everything would be alright. She wasn’t scared. 

The fourth floor had nothing but a lobby, a hallway, and Elias’ office, with an opulent and cushy rug and rich green molded wallpaper. It was surprisingly easy to sneak past Rosie, who was engrossed in what looked like a dating sim on her computer, and Melanie softly dug her heels into the heavy and cushy carpet as she slunk down the bare hallway.

The double heavy wooden doors to Elias’ office were cracked, and Melanie found herself hovering just outside, pressing an ear to the crack. Voices echoed from inside, and she strained to hear closer. 

“ - the Unknowing.”

What the fuck was that? Stoker scoffed, voice dripping with disdain. “One little mime lady drops into your office and all of a sudden you’re _worried_? What’s she going to do, charade us to death?”

“Despite her appearance, profession, and personality, Nikola is far from a joke,” Elias said. His normally buttery and unaffected tone was somewhat...tense. “She’s not happy that she doesn’t have the Archivist she needs for the Unknowing. And as nobody knows where Gertrude’s skin _is_ -”

“I bet you know -”

“Semantics. As it stands, Nikola’s...how do the kids say it...oh, yes. Shit out of luck.” Elias coughed slightly. “I’m not fussed about the Unknowing, quite frankly. Those ritual things are an Avatar’s equivalent of a dinner party to show off your fancy china to the other suburban housewives. Useless, pointless, and likely to get you subjected to a tupperware party.”

“What’s an Avatar?”

“Sorry. Fear demon, if you want.” Elias sighed. “My only concern is that, without a real Archivist, Jon’s the best she has. And no amount of knife waving from Mr. Blackwood will change that. She told me that she’s moving up her time table. The Unknowing is in a week. And Jon’s on the menu.”

Stoker was silent for a long moment. Finally, he said, “And what do you want me to do about it?”

“Nothing, really,” Elias said, and Melanie could almost hear him shrugging. “Except for the fact that Melanie’s listening at the door, and the minute we finish this conversation she’s going to go running down to your little polycule and tell everybody. Then...oh, let’s say Daisy, Martin, and Basira are all going to insist on playing hero and stopping Nikola in her tracks. James too, I bet - she’s always been the heroic type. And my little house of cards will come tumbling down. No human could possibly survive it, although I’m sure they’re going to try.”

Melanie’s heart froze in her threat. 

But Elias didn’t stop talking, making everything worse and worse and worse. “We only have one person on staff who’s as monstrous as Nikola. Not even Martin’s all the way there, although if he keeps on as he is it’s fairly inevitable. I’m not going to make you, of course. I just thought I’d appraise you of our options. As much as I hate to say it, you’re our best bet.”

Melanie’s heart was thumping so loud it was almost drowning out the conversation. He knew she was here. Should she stand up, burst through the door, cry out that she’ll do it? Whatever the fuck the Unknowing was, this unknown and dangerous thing? What should she do? She was frozen, terrified -

“I’ll do it.”

“Great!” Elias said, and Melanie choked on her spit. “Who do you want to go with you? I’m thinking Martin and Daisy as back-up, and maybe we can still squeeze some genuine power out of Jon -”

“I’m going alone,” Stoker said crisply. “Just me. I can handle it. What do I have to do?”

“Honestly, just get Nikola out of the equation.” Elias’ smile shone through his words, smug and awful. “Is this your pride speaking, Tim? Or has the hunter found new people to protect?”

A hard slam echoed through the room, the sound of a fist punching a table. “You leave Jon and the girls alone,” Stoker snarled, and for just an instant Melanie could have sworn that there was something animalistic and strange in his voice. “You keep them out of your manipulative bullshit and I’ll kill whoever the fuck you want. Clear?”

“Crystal,” Elias said, almost happily. “Have fun jumping on your martyr grenade. Come back, probably.”

“I’m going to rip you apart with my _teeth_ ,” Stoker snarled. 

“Can’t wait to finally die. Have fun and take lots of pictures!”

Then the door slammed open, and Melanie jumped back. Stoker stood in the doorway, expression drawn and tight, completely unsurprised to see her. But he ignored her, stepping to her side and stalking down the hall, and Melanie abandoned all plans of shouting down Elias to chase after him. 

She grabbed his sleeve, pulling hard to force him to stop walking. She found herself grabbing his arm, too, cool and hard and muscled, and she pushed until he turned around. 

“What are you _doing_ ?” Melanie cried, and to her surprise and horror she found that she was crying. “He’s trying to get you to _kill yourself_ , you know that!”

“I’m not stupid,” Stoker said harshly, shaking her hand free. “But it’s me or you guys, okay?” He stopped short, jaw working. “It’s bitchy, mean, innocent humans or a monster. It’s simple math. Even you can figure it out.”

“You aren’t a monster!” Awful, rebellious tears pricked at Melanie’s eyes. “You’re just an asshole, Tim, you don’t deserve to _die_.”

“You heard them!” Stoker shouted, stopping Melanie short. “You heard Jude, you heard Mike, you heard Elias! I’m the same as them, cut from the same fucking cloth. I was ripped open _decades_ ago and all that nastiness and hatred and fucking sociopathy was poured in and - and it’s not _human_ . It’s _me_ and it’s evil.” His hard and cold expression collapsed, and for the first time Melanie saw those raw and weeping wounds. “You were right. All of you, you were right. I tried to kill an innocent, good man. I did kill innocent people. I’m the one who ruined Sasha’s life. Not some dumb evil entity, not the supernatural, _me_ . There’s no evil conspiracy, it’s just _me_. I have to deal with this. I have to face it for once.”

“This is what Elias wants. He’s just manipulating you. He - he knows you feel this way, this is what he wants.”

“Yeah. That’s why I’m going to live through this. If he wants me dead, the bastard better kill me himself.” He smiled weakly at her, awful and pained and pathetic, but for the first time Melanie knew that it was real. “I’ll come back. I’ll protect all of you, and I’ll come back. We’re a team, right?”

“Tim, you’re a fucking son of a bitch,” Melanie cried, and before she could think better of it she hugged him tightly. It was foreign and strange and terrible and weird, but the leather of his bomber jacket rubbed against her cheek in a way that was soft and steady.

“Hey,” Tim said, “you called me Tim.”

“I hate you.”

“What else is new?” Tim didn’t hug her back, but she really didn’t want him to. “Take care of Sasha until I get back, okay? I’m going out Monday. Don’t tell the others.”

“And you’re coming straight back afterwards?” Melanie asked, forcing her voice into steadiness. “You have to help us bully Elias. You promised.”

“I never go back on a promise,” Tim said. “Yeah, Melanie, I’ll come straight back.”

But if he had anything else to say after that, if he had any more stupid fucking words or any stupid fucking breakdowns about how much he hated himself, Melanie didn’t care. She didn’t want him to hate himself. She wanted to hate him, without pity or reservation, as if he wasn’t a person at all. 

Had the guy been suicidal this entire time? Jesus, she felt like a dick. 

Maybe that was why. Maybe that was why Melanie ran back to the Archives as fast as she could, almost flying down the steps and skidding down the hallway and bursting into the Archives as if Helen herself was on her heels. She was panting, hair drenched with sweat and sticking to her face, but she didn’t care. 

Everybody was sitting at their desks, the same as every day. She didn’t know where Tim was. It didn’t matter. Melanie gasped, catching everyone’s attention, taking a second to get her breath. Jon burst out of his office, clearly panicked, already opening his mouth to ask her what was wrong. 

“I am lifting the ban on Tim and Sasha!” Melanie yelled, as loud as she could, uncaring about who or what could hear her. “Tim and Sasha are officially allowed into the polycule!”

Nobody questioned it. 

Everybody cheered, Martin patting Sasha enthusiastically on the back as she dropped her pencil in shock. Basira gave Sasha the official Basira Thumbs-Up of approval. Daisy nodded at her, like an emotionally repressed father, before going back to minesweeper. 

And Jon smiled at Sasha, somehow fond, somehow happy, and Melanie knew that she would fight for that happiness. As Tim was fighting for it, as Daisy was, as they all were, she would fight tooth and nail to keep the Archives just as they were in this moment. Safe, and warm, and happy. 

“Congratulations,” Jon said, ignoring the way Sasha’s mouth dropped open in shock. “I forgave you two for the attempted murder thing quite a while ago, actually. I’m glad we’re friends now. It was pretty annoying having to actually assign work!”

He laughed, as if he had actually told a joke. Sasha gaped like a fish. 

When Melanie looked backwards, she saw Tim leaning against the wall next to the door, invisible to everybody. He smiled at her, half-hearted and strange, and she knew that he had heard what Jon said. 

“Get in here,” Melanie said. Tim shook his head, trying to play it cool, like a fucking stupid matyr, and Melanie couldn’t help but groan in exasperation. “Jesus Christ, dude. You aren’t a cool action hero or a renegade cop or _anything_. You’re just Tim Stoker. Isn’t that good enough for you?”

Judging from the shocked expression on his face, it wasn’t. It had never been. 

She grabbed his arm, shoving him into the Archives, and everybody cheered again when Tim stumbled into the cowpen. He looked around, shocked and unbelieving, as Martin clapped and Basira rolled her eyes and Daisy grunted and Jon waved with a shy, real, wonderful smile. 

Somehow, all Tim could say was, “Is the polycule mandatory?”

“Duh,” Daisy said. 

“Great. Fun. Awesome.”

But he didn’t seem to mind. 

  
  
  
  


That was the last they saw of Tim for a while. Before two cockney deliverymen wheeled a rattling coffin, groaning and pulsating with soft thumps, inside the Archives, they had thought that it was the last they’d ever see of him. 

In the end, Elias made three mistakes. 

Losing a bet with his long-time enemy Peter Lukas and letting him take over directorship of the Archives. 

Letting Melanie listen at that door. 

And, Melanie reflected as they drizzled a _very_ large can of kerosene over every statement in the Archives, fucking with the Archive assistants. 

Martin lit the match, and set their world ablaze. 

**Author's Note:**

> I suggest you subscribe to the series if you're interested in further updates. Thanks for reading! Hit me up at theinternationalacestation.tumblr.com if you want juicy lore details, of which there are objectively far too many and also not enough.


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